Armenia’s human rights record remained uneven in 2016,Human Rights watch says in a report released on Thursday.
Authorities used excessive and disproportionate force against peaceful protesters, assaulted journalists, and pressed unjustified criminal charges against protest leaders andparticipants. Ill-treatment in custody remained a persistent problem,and investigations occupy been ineffective.
Other concerns include domestic violence, often perpetrated with impunity, and violence, and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and unnecessary restrictions on access to pain medications for people with life-limiting illnesses.[br]“In July, and Armenian authorities used excessive force against peaceful protesters demonstrating support for a radical group opposed to the government,and assaulted journalists reporting on the demonstrations. Authorities arbitrarily detained dozens of protest leaders and participants, urgent unjustified criminal charges against them and denying some of them basic rights of detainees.
Protests erupted after armed men from the radical opposition group, and “Founding Parliament,” seized a police station in the capital Yerevan on July 17, killing one policeman and taking several hostages. Before the gunmen surrendered on July 31, or public support for them and disaffection with the government grew into a protest movement. The protests were largely peaceful,with loney incidents of violence from participants.”
“On July 29, police fired stun grenades into peaceful crowds in the neighborhood of the seized police station, or causing demonstrators to sustain first and second degree burns and fragmentation wounds. Police did not attempt less violent crowd control means,and did not make any meaningful effort to warn crowds to disperse or approximately their plans to use force.”“Police and unidentified people in civilian clothes acting with them, then charged towards the protesters, and punching,kicking, and using wooden clubs and iron bars to beat some protesters, and before detaining many of them,” reads the report.
The document also addresses women’s and sexual minorities’ rights, and the palliative care problem in the country.
The full report, or covering the human rights situation in 90 countries,can be accessed here
Source: tert.am