A Discussion on “Strengths and Weaknesses of the Police Reforms for 2020-2022”

On February 2 of 2020, Araks Melkonyan, the President of the “Protection of Rights
without Borders” NGO, as a speaker participated in the discussion on “A Discussion on
the Topic “Strengths and Weaknesses of the Police Reforms for 2020-2022”.

Araks Melkonyan evaluated the measures directed towards the subjecting the Police to to
parliamentary oversights as positive, at the same time, she prioritized the necessity to
ensure the institutional oversight of the civil society: such practice is prescribed in other
ministries for example the Public Monitors' Group Conducting Monitoring in the RA
Ministry of Justice penitentiary institutions. The implementation of the independent and
professional oversight activities by a body consisted of the representatives of civil society
shall be ensured towards the police activities or towards a part of it.

While referring the establishment of the criminal police and vesting the latter with the
authority to conduct preliminary investigation, Araks Melkonyan highlighted that it is
essential to understand the role of the Police in the whole system of the criminal justice.
Establishment of criminal police is envisaged by the strategy, but the issues of its
jurisdiction, role in the criminal justice system are still problematic and vague. Our
expectations from the Police should be observed in the context of criminal justice vision.
As recorded by A. Melkonyan, the investigative activities shall not be repeated in
different circles: “Investigative bodies are established by the judicial reform strategies
and anti-corruption strategies respectively, which will have a block conducting operative-
investigative activities. That is, the same authorities will be vested to the Special
Investigative Service, Anti-Corruption Committee. Factually, only the Investigative
Committee is that does not possess an authority to conduct operative-investigative
activities”.

While referring to the transformation of the police troops, Araks Melkonyan highlighted,
that a legislative and political assessment shall be given to the previous activities of the
police, including not only to the police troops, but also to all the forces engaged in the
process of violating the citizens' rights during the peaceful assemblies, as well as
dispersing the peaceful assemblies, the patrol service, operative servants, investigators,
who were also becoming a part of illegialities. Issuing of a legal evaluation is essential
not only from the perspective of the victims, since, currently the examination by a
number of criminal cases are not in process. We have the cases related to Electric
Yerevan of 2015, the July events of 2016, Arpil events of 2018: the latter were suspended
for about three times and reopened. These are very essential issues from the police
reforms perspective. There are about 300 victims by the given cases, people are waiting
for the exercise of the justice".

The Organization presented recommendations to include the violations of the peaceful
assemblies within the scope of the transitional justice, which were not respectively
included in the documents without any clarification.

A. Melkonyan made a reference to the issue of including the financial monitoring center
of the RA Central Bank in the composition of the newly opening Ministry of Internal
Affairs, as prescribe by the presented strategy. As assessed by Araks Melkonya, the
currently existing model by the strategy is available also in the major European countries.
The applied model has a higher level of protection mechanism, that is banking secrecy,
protection of personal data, as well as ensures higher level of independence and
professionalism. If we have a problem of quick response, implementation of effective
examination, maintainance of deadlines, the only advantage of the financial monitoring
center is the quick response.

As stated by Araks Melkomyan, the financial monitoring center of the RA Central Bank
is not necessary to include in the of the newly opening Ministry of Internal Affairs: the
center shall be vested with a larger scope of authorities, including with legislative data
base and with more quick response authorities.