BECOMING EUROPE-LIKE AS THE RIGHT WAY
Support A1+!“It’s much better not to meet CE obligations than to pass the laws over the given bills” , Avetik Ishkhanyan, Chairman of Helsinki Association of Armenia concluded, summarising the 3-day seminar on “Process for Carrying out Armenia’s Commitments towards Council of Europe”.
Joining CE, Armenia has pledged itself to passing a new Criminal Code, Laws on “Parties”, “Ombudsman”, “Alternative Military Service”, “Mass Media” etc, to ratifying European Convention on Human Rights and the protocols, affiliated with it, particularly to abolish capital punishment in the country and not to restrict activity of various religious organisations.
According to Natalia Vutova, representative of CE Secretary General in Armenia, Armenia is to meet its obligations by June 2003.
“Council of Europe is a large family. It aims first to render help. Using punishment is an extraordinary measure. PACE can make a decision over it. And the first possible punishment measure is that Armenian delegation might be disfranchised for a year, Vutova says.
Armenia didn’t take upon itself to carry out constitutional reforms. Vutova says ”they are eager to get the English version of it” as they have found despite the agreement it says everyone has the right to live but there is nothing said about abolition of capital punishment .
“The issue over abolition of capital punishment will no longer be pressing after the Constitutional referendum” , Lilit Simonyan, head of “Centre for Right and Information Science” s/o, says. Especially that death penalty hasn’t been used in Armenia for 20 years.
