Difference between Armenia’s and Georgia’s penitentiaries according to Larisa Alaverdyan

Recently cadres showing tortures of Georgian prisoners in Tbilisi’s Gldan prison appeared on the internet.
The video shows how the prison watchers subject prisoners to sexual assault with rubber truncheons and even with a broom. There were also cadres, how about 20 prison watchers beat prisoners by hands and feet. These cadres were provided to oppositional TVs in Belgium by a Gldan prisoner employee, which had been shooting for months.
Lurer.com talked to former human rights defender Larisa Alaverdyan to find out what’s the situation like in Armenia’s prisons.

For years I’ve been dealing with this issue, many times I and the monitoring group talked on cruel attitude, severe beatings, we also notice phenomena discrediting their dignity, but never as a member of NGOs, as a human right defender and as an MP we didn’t come across complaints like those of Gldan prison. I’m very sorry that such phenomena still exist.

Is it possible that our cameras just didn’t shot such cadres?

In all cases, monitoring group has worked in prisons for many years and I can only say one thing: if the sufferer doesn’t speak on it, we’re just to guess. Many different organizations defending human rights have entered and went out. If such things occurred, they would inform somehow. People were busy with it, shots have been made, Edik Baghdasaryan, Avetik Ishkhanyan, Mikael Baghdasaryan spoke on it, but not a single organization busy with monitoring didn’t have such data, there weren’t likewise complaints.

What kind of complaints do they receive?

There are mainly complaints on rooms being overcrowded, when there are more people than beds in cells, lack of natural light, day-and-night electrical light is on, but anyway, what refers to cruel attitude and beating, unfortunately there were cases when we and NGOs noticed and controlled, particularly Mher Yenokyan was subjected to severe beating which tried to escape (Lurer.com: Mher Yenokyan studied in Yerevan’s Medical Institute. On his third year of studies he was accused of murdering his fellow student and was sentenced death penalty, which later was transformed into life in prison. Mher Yenokyan didn’t confess his crime, and it’s ten years he’s been fighting for verdict change.) Discussion was held on Yenokyan’s beating in Ministry of Justice. I want to note, that no matter how much we fix those phenomena, we’ll fail to eradicate them. Right, such cases are unavoidable, but if they can reveal somehow, they’ll proceed.

Can we conclude from Your speech that prisoners’ state in our country is better than those of Georgia?

We talked on it long ago. At the end of the 90s HRD organizations of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia had a joint program, within the framework of which monitoring have been realized in prisons: at that time we have also gone to central prison in Tbilisi, where the condition was horrible, it was so bad that when international organizations asked whom they should help first to improve conditions, we said: central Tbilisi prison. I saw the horrible situation with my own eyes, we were terrified, it was as though we were watching films about prisons of previous era.

Nelly Avetisyan