“Illegal or high-handed killings by authorities and their agents were not noted but the cases of death in peace in the army is still a problem”, says the US State Department’s Report on Human Rights in Armenia.
“Suspicious cases of death were recorded in the army, “dedovshina” and time military servants were maltreated by officers and other soldiers and no one was responsible for this”, was mentioned in the synopsis of the report. The report also says that all that is contributed by low standards of living, corruption, impunity of commanders and the lack of reporting.
The report also describes in detail the condition of the rights of children. Especially, the cases of abuses, sexual violence and hard physical jobs for infants (often without agreements) are mentioned.
The announcements about tortures continue. Prisons are overpopulated and the conditions are antisanitarian. Police officers beat arrested in police offices, people are arrested without substantive suspicion because of joining a particular political party or for a political activity. The rights of employers are widely violated and employees often work without contracts. The latter hire their employers for a probation month without salaries and then fire them.
Regarding the freedom of speech and freedom of press, the authors of the report are concerned with self-censorship of the media since they are afraid to appear in the dock and be involved material penalty, mentioning later defamation cases against media.
Television doesn’t provide with the diversity of political views and objective information and because of using digital broadcasting, diversity and numbers of TV channels has decreased, mentioned the authors of the article. The authors also remind that people responsible for the killings on March 1 haven’t been revealed yet.