Had to do a round of introductions today on issues in Democracy for an international group of people representing various countries with similar or worse democratic problems than those of ARmenia. As we had 12 presenters, the speaches had to be done in 5 minutes max, and had to include our vision of Democracy in the UK and Democracy Problems in our countries. Really really tight - isn’t it? I had to choose carefully what to say and how to convey a more or less general picture. As we didn’t really have time to prepare the little impromptu speech I made was rather one sided, still, I guess I ought to publish it here - for public shame and comments… more…

Armenia liberty reports:

You may remember a while back when 2 bodies were found in a resevoir in Nagorno Karabagh, and they had been clearly beaten and killed. 3 youths were questioned and a videotaped confession was recorded by one of the youths, Razmik Sargsian, aged 20. He claims that the confession was made a a result of hours of torture and threats of rape, he also claims that Armenia’s chief Prosecutor personally punched him in the face.

The three youths have been sentenced to life in prison for the charges. I do not know the details of this case, but the previous Ombudsman Larisa Alaverdyan has stated publicly that there is clear evidence of torture and such allegations should have been treated far more seriously. The defence is convinced that the youths are innocent, and that the murder was commited by higher members of the military structure in Karabagh.

An interesting statistic is also brought forward, it is now statistically more likely for an Armenian conscript to get killed or injured by one of his own than an enemy attack. This is both worrying and shameful. I hope that the true perpatrators of this crime are eventually brought to justice. Although we can currently only hope.

Armenianow.com posted a little later than usual yesterday, so in case you haven’t looked at it yet, it has a number of stories on NGOs that are doing really good work. Even better — they aren’t all in Yerevan!

One especially interesting case is of an NK NGO that has trouble getting funding as NK isn’t recognized as a state. (Or maybe this was especially interesting to me because I am writing a paper on the statehood question for my international law class right now!)

Please check out ArmeniaNow for some really great stories of NGOs doing positive things.

On a related topic, I shared with a crowd at Onnik’s presentation in London, an excellent survey of NGOs in Armenia done by a wonderful scholar at the LSE, Dr. Armine Ishkanian. Here’s a publically free work of hers that may interest you if you’re curious about NGOs in Armenia. If you have access to a university’s library online database you can surely fine her longer works.

The Law on the Receiving of Information, signed off by the president on Dec. 19, relates to the acquisition of information, responses to enquiries, creation of information databases and others issues regarding the handling, use and release of information about private individuals.

This is part of the Council of Europe rules that require that members have laws on freedom of information. [source]

On 26 October 2004, at the First OSCE South Caucasus Media Conference (Tbilisi, Georgia), journalists adopted a declaration calling the Government of Azerbaijan to “adopt a comprehensive law on Free Access to Information based on international standards”, and the governments of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to develop in all three States “a comprehensive strategy for the implementation of the [freedom of information] laws, jointly with the media and NGOs.” [source]

This is important to the region.

There has been a steady growth of freedom of information legislation in the region. Georgia was in the forefront in standard-setting as it was the first country in the South Caucasus to adopt a comprehensive Freedom of Information (FOI) Law in 1999. Armenia is the only country in the region with a detailed strategy for the implementation of its FOI Law, developed by three Armenian civil society groups. Despite positive developments in Armenia and Georgia, both countries there have had problems with the implementation of the existing laws, further complicated by broad state secrets acts. Azerbaijan, which has not passed an advanced law yet, is further behind the other two States. [source]

Armenia’s Freedom of Information law was enacted in 2003 and is available here.

A bigger study of the FOI laws in the Caucasus would be very interesting… dissertation ideas!