European Court of Human Rights

CHAMBER JUDGMENT MKRTCHYAN v. ARMENIA

In a first-ever ruling relating to Armenia, the European Court of Human Rights
on Thursday declared illegal the arrest of an Armenian opposition activist who
helped to organize an anti-government demonstration more than four years ago.

The landmark judgment will raise fresh questions about the legality of hundreds
of similar arrests that have accompanied the Armenian government’s controversial
crackdowns on the opposition in recent years.

The plaintiff, Armen Mkrtchian, was detained by the police along with several
other members of the radical opposition Hanrapetutyun (Republic) party after
actively participating in an unsanctioned rally in Yerevan on May 14, 2002. He
was released after being fined a largely symbolic 500 drams ($1.5) under
Armenia’s Soviet-era Administrative Code.

Mkrtchian took his case to the Strasbourg-based court in November 2002, arguing
that the Armenian authorities can not sanction anyone for attending street
protests in the absence of a law regulating the constitutionally guaranteed
freedom of assembly.

Armenia enacted such a law only in 2004. Until then, the Armenian government
invoked Soviet-era regulations that required government permission for the
holding of rallies and other public gatherings. Mkrtchian and his lawyer insist
that those can not have a legal force in modern-day Armenia.

A panel of seven European Court judges, among them Armenian Alvina Gyulumian,
unanimously accepted the 35-year-old oppositionist’s arguments, ruling that his
brief detention violated a key article of the European Convention on Human
Rights which takes precedence over all Armenian laws and government directives.
Yerevan signed up to the convention when it joined the Council of Europe in
January 2001.

The Strasbourg court cited a lack of “domestic provision which clearly stated
whether the former USSR laws remained or did not remain in force on the
territory of Armenia.” Its did not impose any penalties on the Armenian state,
saying that the “finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just
satisfaction for any non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant.”

Mkrtchian, who did not seek any material compensation, said he is fully
satisfied with the ruling. “The main purpose of my application was to show our
judges and rulers that they must honor their obligations to the Council of
Europe,” he told RFE/RL. “They will now be more vigilant. I have kind of cleared
the way for similar legal challenges against illegalities committed in our
country.”

The Armenian Justice Ministry, which fought the government’s corner in
Strasbourg, declined comment. A spokeswoman said Justice Minister David
Harutiunian is too “busy” to immediately react to the development.

The Armenian authorities used the Administrative Code to arrest hundreds of
opposition supporters and activists during the presidential elections of
February-March 2003 and the April-May 2004 opposition campaign of street
protests against President Robert Kocharian. Many of them were sentenced to
between five and fifteen days’ imprisonment in closed overnight trials condemned
by local and Western human rights groups.

The Council of Europe has repeatedly criticized the practice of so-called
“administrative detentions,” leading the authorities in Yerevan to abolish it
last year.

By Ruzanna Stepanian