HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER: ARMENIAN PRESIDENT’S CHARGES TO INTENSIFY INQUIRY INTO MARCH 1 INCIDENTS MEANS THAT IT WAS NOT ACCURATE BEFORE

arminfo
Wednesday, May 25, 14:13

I can just welcome the Armenian president’s amnesty proposal, for
those prisoners shouldn’t have been imprisoned at all. If amnesty is
declared and those people are set free, it will be a step forward,
says Georgy Gogia, a representative of Human Right Watch for South
Caucasus and Central Asia, in an online interview with ArmInfo.

Friday President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan made an amnesty proposal
to the parliament. According to rumors, all the political prisoners
over March 1 2008 case will be pardoned.

“The Armenian authorities actually take certain steps to protect
the right of the citizens, but we have to wait a little to assess
the efficiency of those steps. President of Armenia charged the
law-enforcers to investigate the March 1 2008 case with renewed vigor.

I think that it means that the previous inquiry was not accurate and
the public did not trust in the results. Therefore, we have to wait to
the results of the renovated investigation and it is very important for
the public and political forces to be involved in the process. Human
Rights Watch came out with a special report on the March incidents of
2008 and it is very important for us that the inquiry gives answers
also to the questions raised in the report and that specific persons
responsible for the incidents are punished,” he said.

In general, Gogia highlighted certain positive shifts in the solution
to the problem of political prisoners in Armenia, as certain persons
imprisoned on political motives have been set free recently. There
are talks on further release of all prisoners on political motives.

Interviews with a number of political experts and figures are organized
for Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists on sidelines of the project
“Alternative Information in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Dialogue” of the
Region Research Center (Armenia) and Institute for Peace and Democracy
(Azerbaijan).

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress