Friday, February 27 2015 08:11

Amnesty International Report 2014/15 "The State Of The World's Human Rights" addressed also Armenia's problems in the field.  Particularly, the report highlights such problems as restriction of the freedom of assembly and use of violence by police against peaceful demonstrators. 

According to Amnesty International "Peaceful protesters were dispersed by police using excessive force in several instances. Police broke up peaceful protests using excessive force on a number of occasions throughout the year."

As for tortures ands other ill-treatment, the report says local (Armenian) human rights defenders continued to raise concern over high numbers of reported beatings and ill-treatment in police custody.

The document spotlight the investigation in the case of Shant Haroutiunyan, leader of "Tseghakron" Party, who is currently serving his sentence in a penitentiary. 

"Authorities still had to effectively investigate the allegations of ill-treatment in custody of the opposition leader Shatn Harutyunyan. Shatn Harutyunyan and 13 other activists were arrested following clashes with the police on 5 November 2013, when they were attempting to march to the presidential building. Allegations of ill-treatment by two activists detained during protests on 7 March also remained without effective investigation," Amnesty International reports. 

To recall, 37 people were arrested after clashes with the police in the course of the protest action "March of Millions of Masks" on Nov 5 in Yerevan. Four police officers and a teen were injured during the incident, 20 of the detained have been arrested. On Nov the families of the detainees held protest actions demanding their release. On December 18 one of the detainees, leader of Tseghakron Party Shant Haroutiunyan filed a complaint to the investigation against the ban on meetings with the family. The ban was not lifted however.  Later, Haroutiunyan was sentenced to 6 years in prison.