"The publication of the reference of urgent reports pursues an aim of not criticizing the Ministry of Justice or Penitentiary Department, but to draw the attention of these agencies to this issue. If the system of ad hoc report functions like this, it essentially loses its sense", mentioned Edmon Marukyan, the member of the group of public observers conducting public monitoring of penitentiary institutions and bodies under the RA Ministry of Justice.

The group submitted 21 ad hoc reports in 2011. According to the head of the group of public observers Arthur Sakunts all of the reports received formal answers and the raised issues remained unsettled.

"Analyzing the ad hoc reports we came to the conclusion that no due investigation was conducted on the represented cases of violations of rights, no appropriate steps were taken to re-establish the violated rights and disclose  the responsible persons and make them accountable", mentioned  the author of ad hoc reports reference  Edmon Marukyan.

He presented some cases of violation of rights to which the Ministry of Justice and Penitentiary Department answered as follows: "The issues raised by you have been investigated, however the presented facts have not been justified", "The facts presented by you do not correspond to reality" or "The actions of the administrative board or given official are legal".

Nikolay Arustamyan, the Advisor to the RA Minister of Justice, mentioned that he did not find touching upon concrete examples expedient, as he did not know the details and called for the discussion of general issues. 

He mentioned that the Ministry was also concerned about the functioning of the system: "Yes, we agree that the system does not function well, so we raised the issue and called for finding a joint solution, because the Ministry is interested in the good work of this institution", said Mr. Arustamyan.

"Although, I find publicity a good thing, but at the same time I think that it would have been more proper dialogue, if the Ministry and the group of public observers gathered and discussed the problems in a working atmosphere: from which point of view does the system work badly and what suggestions or trends are there to amend it?", added the Advisor to the Minister of Justice.

He also said that the Minister is concerned about the work of the group of public observers not only in the sense of current but also annual reports. According to Mr. Arustamyan the 2 latest annual reports were formal.

"They are formal to such a degree, that I do not avoid saying that they repeat one another doing a so called "copy-paste" in such a way compiling the report for the next year", he said.

Mr. Arustamyan emphasized that the group of public observers was established not by the international compulsion or programs but with efforts of Ministry of Justice and is adjacent to it.

Arthur Sakunts, the head of the group of public observers disagreed with Nikolay Arustamyan and said that if the group were adjacent to the Minister, he wouldn't have been its member. "And as to the 'copy-paste' here the problem is not that something is 'copied and pasted' but that the issues have not been settled yet, and we can continuously write about these issues", added Mr. Sakunts.

The human rights activists, who were present at the discussion also stated that many issues remain unsettled for years, they bring concrete examples of violations of rights that have not been investigated and no one was held accountable.

Nikolay Arustamyan once again expressed his opinion that publishing the ad hoc report is not proper: "I notice a tendency of not only making it public but also turning it into a show, which is not acceptable. You are more than welcome if you seek for work and dialogue".

Mr. Sakunts disagreed with him: "We do not turn it into a show, we have nothing to do with the show, we do our work.  And we persist that the subject of today's discussion is the fact that you did not give proper answer to our ad hoc report and we expect healthy discussion".

Mr. Arustamyan mentioned, that they were working on some of the raised issues at that time and were going to discuss some questions with the members of the group of public observers in future.

Meri Alexanyan
Source: www.hra.am