1 / 3

On April 30, at the sitting of the RA NA Standing Committee on Protection of Human Rights and Public Affairs the annual programme on the Activities of the RA Human Rights Defender (HRD), the State of the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms during 2020 and the annual report on the Activities of the RA Human Rights Defender as National Mechanism Prevention were debated.

The RA HRD Arman Tatoyan highlighted the cooperation with the structure led by him and the Standing Committees of the parliament, especially with the NA Standing Committee on Protection of Human Rights and Public Affairs, as a result of which numerous problems concerning the sphere were solved.

As Arman Tatoyan assured, in 2020 the HRD worked overloaded. In 2020 the structure received 14.780 complaints. During that period Tatoyan visited 200 to criminal-executive institutions and police, and published 7 guidelines in 7 languages.

The new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the Azerbaijani large scale attacks against Artsakh and Armenia by principle changed the directions of the HRD activities: there were 32 such gross violations of human rights against war crimes and humanity, the precedent of which had not been. In fact, all programmes and reports were made besides Armenian in 6 languages: English, Russian, French, Arabic, Chinese and Spanish. This required unique efforts from the Staff of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia.

According to the HRD, the violations of rights have been various: beginning from mass destructions of the Artsakh peaceful settlements up to cruel behaviour with unique cynicism towards civilians and servicemen. All these violations are reflected in detail in the joint reports and programmes of the RA Human Rights Defender with Artsakh Human Rights Defender.

Regarding the issue of the Armenian captives, Tatoyan has noted that the captives’ return is an international demand.

The hatred campaign against our people and our country by the president of Azerbaijan was touched upon. It has been noted that the president of that country pursues the policy towards us reaching fascism.

Aramn Tatoyan also noted that during 2020 the subdivision implementing the functions of the national preventive mechanism maintained permanent contact with his partner state bodies. Effective debates on different issues with the Police, Criminal-Executive Service of the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutor’s Office, the National Security Service, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and other structures. During the year different documents were addressed to those departments, which related to the steps taken on dissemination prevention of the new coronavirus in prisons and on avoiding the unfavourable consequences, clarifications were demanded, as well as relevant proposals had been made.

The RA Human Rights Defender answered to the MPs’ questions, which related to the various problems of the sphere.