"Zhoghovurd" daily writes: "In the last one year, 27 people died in the penal institutions of Armenia. ArmLur.am was officially informed by the RA Ministry of Internal Affairs penitentiary that 10 were suicide cases and 17 inmates died as a result of health problems, with diseases that in many cases were clearly incompatible with being kept in custody. These numbers are not just statistics.
They are 27 human destinies and 27 questions for the state, the answers of which have not been given to this day. The most worrying thing is that both the judges who applied detention and the medical staff of the penitentiary institutions were aware of these diseases. Moreover, many of those who died in prison were not even convicted. they were in pre-trial detention, while the presumption of innocence still applies, but that right did not save them from death. Of course, the law seems to have planned everything.
Clause 5 of Part 1 of Article 10 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia guarantees the right of a detained person to receive medical assistance. Clause 101 of the RA Government Decision No. 825 of May 26, 2006 also provides for the possibility of using the services of specialists of a civilian medical institution of one's own choice. However, these legal guarantees very often remain only on paper, and in reality the detained person is deprived of the necessary medical care to preserve the right to life.
Of course, Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan announces the "reformed penitentiary system", "people-centered policy" and that a person is the highest value in Armenia. At that moment, the question arises: is it about the same Armenia, where an average of three people die in prison every month? If 27 deaths were recorded in prisons in any European country within a year, that topic would become a subject of serious political and legal discussion.
However, silence prevails in Armenia. The international structures that make statements from the highest podiums about the protection of human rights, the RA ombudsman, are silent. The organizations that are usually ready to voice assessments on the internal political processes of Armenia at every opportunity are silent. Many human rights defenders, who used to speak out about human rights violations in case of the smallest incident, are also silent.
The most painful thing, however, is that after these deaths there is no accountability, no systematic assessments, no officials who answer why these deaths could have been prevented, but they happened anyway. If the state is unable to ensure the protection of the life and health of a person under its full control, then it is not an individual tragedy, but a systemic failure. A penitentiary is a place to serve a sentence or carry out a preventive measure, not a waiting room for death."
Details in today's issue of "Zhoghovurd" daily.
