The PRWB Submitted 32 Compliant-Applications Regarding the Human Rights Violation of July 16-30 Events of 2016

“The Protection of Rights without Borders” NGO has undertaken the legal protection of the citizens, journalists, who suffered as a result of human rights violations during the events of July 17-30, 2016.

The spontaneous assemblies and marches during July 17-30 of 2016 were accompanied with gross human rights violations: police officers and unonimous persons in civilian clothes used violence against the citizens.

Within the period of July 20-29 of 2016, the police officers also applied special measures.

The advocates of the Protection of Rights without Borders NGO visited different police stations, hospitals, special investigation service, providing their support to the citizens, who suffered from the human rights violations during the peaceful assemblies.

The Organization forwarded reports, letter, announcements and other relevant documents on the application of force, illegal detention to different police stations, keeping the detainees more than as prescribed by the law and application of special measures against the demonstration participants and journalists covering the demonstrations of 2016 to the RA Prosecutor General’s Office, RA Police, RA Human Rights Defender, Ministry of Healthcare and other bodies.

The Organization representatives had meetings with the detained citizens carrying out human rights violations documentation.

The documented facts proofed, that the commitments undertaken by the European Convention of Human Rights have not been carried out by the state.

Systematic problems regarding the violations and inaction by the Police have been detected.

Since January of 2017, the Organization has elaborated and filed 32 complaint-applications to the European Court of Human Rights.

Particularly, violation and ill treatment cases under Article 3 of the Convention, the illegal detention by the Police under the right to liberty and security prescribed by Article 5, the dispersion of the demonstrations and the illegal restrictions of the right of the citizens to obtaining of information under Article 10 that is freedom of expression and under Article 11 freedom of assembly and associations respectively, as well as the issue of the lack of effective remedy measures regarding all the 4 cases in the judiciary of Armenia in the light of Article 13 of the Convention that is right to effective remedy were presented in the complaint-application.

In regard to 4 complaint- applications filed to the ECHR, the violation of Article 18 of the Convention was raised for the first time, according to which, the restriction of the Applicants’ rights to freedom was exercised for other purposes, than its prescribed by the Convention.

From the submitted 32 applications, the Organization received the decisions on the registration of only 28 made by the ECHR. The registration of 4 cases were rejected by the Court.

According to the letter received from the RA Special Investigation Service on September 24 of 2018, the proceeding of the criminal case number 61205016 regarding the events in Sari Tagh on July 29 of 2016 instituted at the Special Investigation Service has been discontinued.

In accordance with the information provided by the Special Investigation Service, the proceeding of the criminal case has been discontinued with the reasoning “as the accused was unanimous”.

The Organization appealed the decision on the discontinuation of the proceeding of the criminal case dated October 9 of 2018 to the RA Prosecutor General’s Office.

The RA Prosecutor General’s Office adopted a decision to reject the appeal filed by the Organization.

On November 17 of 2018, the Protection of Rights without Borders NGO filed an appeal to the Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction against the decisions made by the RA Special Investigation Service to discontinue the proceeding of the criminal case instituted at the Special Investigation Service and the decision made by the Prosecutor General’s Office to reject the appeal of the Organization respectively.