In Yerevan, after law enforcers’ torture of refugee, activists hold protest

Yerevan protesters have blocked traffic in front of the building of the Investigating Committee (IC), demanding its fair reaction to the statement about the torture of Tigran Ulubabyan, a Karabakh refugee, at a police station.

Roman Yeritsyan, an advocate, has reported that a female refugee from Nagorno-Karabakh was robbed in the city of Vanadzor. Her relative, Tigran Ulubabyan, accompanied her to the police station. But instead of searching for the robbers, law enforcers tortured him for six hours, forcing him to take the robbery upon himself, the advocate wrote in a social network.

According to Yeritsyan, "policemen disregarded the fact that Ulubabyan was a participant in the Karabakh wars and had wounds." The advocate suspects that law enforcers’ actions could go unpunished, since the Armenian IC is formally approaching such cases, often closing them with the wording that the offence was not proven.

On March 19, Yeritsyan called on Armenian citizens to gather at the IC building in Yerevan for a protest action and support Tigran Ulubabyan. According to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, up to 200 people took part in the action.

Levon Kocharyan, an MP from the “Armenia” faction, said that since 2018, more than 1100 cases of police violence against citizens have been recorded, but only 20 cases have reached the court and sentencing. "It’s clear from these figures that policemen behave this way because they see impunity. It’s not excluded that protests may result in positive changes," the MP has explained.

Ruben Melikyan, a human rights defender, has noted that "many policemen see their job as humiliating citizens."

Gegam Stepanyan, a former Nagorno-Karabakh Ombudsperson, has noted that this is not the first case of police’s brutality against Karabakh residents. He has also added that the implied impunity allows law enforcers to use violence against citizens.