ARMENIA: LIFE WITHOUT HOPE
By Karine Asatrian in Nubarashen
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[05:44 pm] 25 September, 2006
After the abolition of the death penalty, Armenian lifers say they
still face a bleak future.
Twenty-five-year-old Tsolak Melkonian was sentenced to death six
years ago for a murder he committed when he was doing his military
service. Then his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment under
a presidential decree.
But Melkonian is depressed by the sentence that lies before him. "Life
imprisonment is tougher than what I should be getting," he said. "If
there’s no death penalty, I should get 15 years. If they don’t review
my sentence, I am ready to mount a hunger-strike."
Melkonian has already been through several hunger-strikes after
demanding that the courts review his sentence. Shortly after he
committed the murder, he tried to shoot himself in the heart but
survived.
In prison, he has married Lyuda Marutian, an eye specialist who
visited him when he had problems with his vision.
IWPR met Melkonian, a tall thin young man, in the meeting room of
Nubarashen prison, where his wife and grandmother had come to see
him. The new prison governor recently gave inmates the right to three
visits a year.
The meeting room had a divan, two armchairs, a small desk and a
television. Melkonian talked to his grandmother while his wife
made coffee.
"Life imprisonment is too harsh a punishment for a crime committed
by a 19-year-old for which he has repented," said Marutian.
Nubarashen prison is on the outskirts of the Armenian capital
Yerevan. Journalists are only allowed to visit it with the permission
of the justice ministry.
The round building can be seen from a long way off, but if you did
not know, you would not realise it was a prison. There is no fence
or barbed wire surrounding it, and no observation towers. All the
checks on visitors take place inside.
Armenia currently has 71 prisoners serving life sentences, of whom 55
are in Nubarashen. The lifers live on the fifth floor along a long,
narrow and dimly-lit corridor. There are three or four prisoners to
a cell.
No one has been executed in Armenia since 1991, but the death penalty
was only formally abolished in 2003, two years after Armenia joined
the Council of Europe, for which this is a condition of membership. The
president commuted 42 death sentences.
Many of the lifers, supported by human rights defenders, were unhappy
about their new sentences, saying they were left with no hope for
the future.
They pointed out that under the old criminal code under which they
were charged, their sentences should have been reduced to prison
terms of between 15 and 20 years, not life.
"A fixed term of life imprisonment is more severe than 15 to 20 years,"
said Avetik Ishkhanian, head of the Helsinki Committee of Armenia. "A
toughening of the law should not be retroactive."
Armenia’s recently appointed human rights ombudsman Armen Harutunian
disagrees, saying abolition of the death penalty is a big step
forward. "[Life imprisonment] really is more humane," he said. "To
be honest, we have not found any infringement of human rights here."
However, many prisoners disagree, saying that even the improved prison
conditions they live in are hard to endure.
"I think that life imprisonment is a harsher punishment than the
death penalty," said 38-year-old Manuk Semerjian, who has spent 15
years in Nubarashen.
"People are amazed at how I managed to survive and not die," said
Semerjian of his time in prison in the Nineties. "In those years,
nothing was allowed in the cell – no parcels, no meetings. We got
repulsive meals. And twice a day they beat us up."
Semerjian said things began to improve only in 2001, when the
justice ministry took over the prison. That year, Semerjian said,
the beatings stopped.
Nikolai Arustamian, head of the justice ministry’s penal reform
department, cited many improvements that had taken place in the last
five years. He said living conditions had been improved, and the
cells refurbished and provided with televisions.
The prison governor Aram Sargsian, appointed in 2005, says that he
has ensured that conditions are now much better. He said two choices
faced him as head of the jail, "To treat the prisoners like animals,
enrage them and try to restrain them by force, or to create a peaceful
moral and psychological atmosphere, a manageable situation and to
guarantee safety. We chose the second path."
Sargsian said the way inmates were treated depended on what category
they were placed in – "especially dangerous", "dangerous" and "less
dangerous". They are categorised not by their crime but according to
their behaviour in prison.
Many lifers, especially those who fall into the most extreme category,
still appear desperate. They are not allowed to walk in the open air,
and their cells only have high barred windows.
Prominent Armenian human rights activist Mikael Danielian said he
had no evidence of torture being practiced in prisons, but the living
conditions there were "inhuman" and well short of European standards.
At dawn on July 23 this year, four prisoners tried to escape after
sawing through a metal door lock and bolts with a razor. When warders
blocked their way, three of them tried to slash their wrists. Armenian
newspapers reported that they tried to harm themselves because they
were afraid of being beaten.
Conditions are better for those in the "less dangerous" category. They
include Edik Grigorian, Derenik Bejanian and Ashot Knyazian, all
serving life sentences for the most notorious crime in Armenia in
recent years, the shooting of eight prominent politicians inside
parliament in October 1999.
The three men have a fridge, a table and chairs, and two
televisions. They offered this correspondent a cup of hot chocolate
to drink.
One of the three, Knyasian, expressed a common fear among the lifers,
that even if a court orders their release after 20 years, as the
criminal code allows, their lives will effectively be over.
Another lifer, Ashot Manukian, said, "I’ve been in jail since I
was 19. If I get out, I’ll be 39. What can I study, what can I do,
what’s the point? Will I be born again?"
According to human rights activist Avetik Ishkhanian, a change in
the constitution last year means that citizens now have the right to
protest against presidential decrees in the constitutional court.
At the moment, the lifers have more modest hopes – being allowed
to step out of their cells, walk in the courtyard and talk to their
fellow inmates.