US' DoS criticizes situation with human rights in Armenia

The political crisis in Armenia that stemmed from essential violations in the course of the 2008 presidential election is not over, and the atmosphere in the country continues to remain tense. This was stated in the report of the United States' Department of State (DoS) published on March 11.

"New violations of human rights were fixed: the authorities restricted citizens' free will during the election to the Board of Elders of Yerevan; in 2009, they persecuted their political opponents, voluntarily detained people, kept them for long in pre-trial custodies, and applied intimidation or squaring accounts methods to them," the DoS' experts believe.

The report notes that the authorities of Armenia had restricted the freedom of assembly and association, and pluralism of opinions in mass media.

Galust Saakyan, deputy chairman of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, told journalists in his comment on the report of the US Department of State that the document is biased and does not reflect real processes.

Vladimir Karapetyan, a member of the oppositional Armenian National Congress (ANC), does not agree with Saakyan. "The depth of the report evidences that the DoS had closely studied all the ANC's estimates; as a matter of fact, their estimates concerning human rights violations coincide with ours by 80 percent."