Laura Gasparyan, the coordinator of the National Prevention Mechanism implementation at the Human Rights Defender’s office and head of the Department for Prevention of Torture and Ill-Treatment, noted in a conversation with Iravaban.net that despite legislation clearly stipulating that complaints from persons deprived of liberty addressed to the Human Rights Defender must be delivered within 24 hours, in cases where postal services in penitentiary institutions operate only two days per week, these complaints are received with delays, which does not contribute to effective work organization.
“This is problematic because it could be a report of ill-treatment or an urgent need to protect a person’s rights, about which we are informed later, especially when these follow non-working days,” she said.
Another issue, according to our interviewee, is censorship, when individuals submit complaints as open text without a sealed envelope, and in this case, the penitentiary institution becomes familiar with the content of the complaint: “This is also a subculture issue, because people are still influenced by these subcultural norms, that complaints need to be provided as open text for discussion, so they understand who the complaint concerns and what issue it addresses.”
Laura Gasparyan noted that currently the Human Rights Defender’s hotline procedure works quite effectively, and they receive many calls regarding the protection of the rights of persons deprived of liberty.
“We receive complaints of various nature, mainly related to issues within criminal proceedings, health protection rights, cell conditions, as well as difficulties in accessing translation services. We have received complaints regarding conditional early release issues.
We have also received alerts about food quality, specifically that the food on a particular day was of very poor quality; of course, we immediately contacted the service, and steps were taken,” said Gasparyan.
In our conversation, she also discussed the cooperation between the Human Rights Defender and penitentiary institutions, the actions outlined in the judicial strategy, and other issues.
According to her, the 2023-2026 judicial strategy envisions a procedure for submitting anonymous complaints, which currently faces difficulties: “A final procedure has not yet been developed, only drafts have been received suggesting legislative changes to specific legal acts, which will establish the possibility of submitting anonymous complaints, but what procedures, regulations, and mechanisms these entail is not yet clear.”
Details in the video.
The Armenian Lawyers’ Association conducts monitoring aimed at judicial and legal reforms, anti-corruption policy, as well as the implementation of the national strategy for human rights protection and resulting action plans. Within the monitoring framework, the online professional media Iravaban.net, with the help of field specialists, analyzes and covers both fully implemented actions as well as partially implemented or completely unfulfilled ones, also addressing the gaps, obstacles, and reasons recorded in them.
