Emil Danielyan has written an article on Transitions Online about Kocharyan and the worsening human rights record of Armenia.

“Armenia has taken a big step backward in the past three months in terms of human rights protection,” says Vartan Harutiunian, a prominent human rights campaigner who himself spent eight years in Soviet labor camps as a political prisoner. ‘We are now firmly on a path leading to dictatorship.”

One of the main charges is the widespread use of “administrative” imprisonments which last for up to 15 days, and require no charges be brought. These are similar in some way to anti-terrorism legislation in the US and the UK (among other countries) by which authorities only need to say they are a risk to national security. In that case of Armenia, the police merely bring charges of “disrupting order” or defying police.