Government encourages poverty

Since the fall session of the parliament ANC MPs have asked a number of times why the parliament does not discuss the bill on compensating homicide victims as suggested by European convention. The bill is in the parliament’s agenda for ten years.

In November 2013 NA speaker Hovik Abrahamyan said they would discuss this soon. However, they failed to bring this issue up in November or December. During yesterday’s session of the parliament it turned out that the mentioned bill would not be discussed at all as the government had asked the president to recall this international agreement. Even though the bill is still on the agenda of the parliament, we can stay assured that the president will approve the government’s proposal to take it out of the agenda.

Back in November we wrote that this bill would be cancelled it would bring extra trouble for the government through imposing new financial obligation on the government.

This bill proposes that victims should be compensated in case it is not possible to find and discover the guilty culprits and the compensation would be paid by the government.

ANC has been periodically discussing this bill because it could make the government compensate the families of March 1 clampdown 10 victims and 200 injured demonstrators.

During yesterday’s session MP Gagik Jhangiryan asked why the government had proposed to cancel the bill that had been approved by the government, the Constitutional Court had ruled it in line with Armenia’s legislation, and the government has appointed a representative to the parliament to follow the discussions. This convention has been ratified by 15 members of the EU, including Azerbaijan. He believes that this bill would enable to get compensation not only for the families of the March 1 victims but also for soldiers killed by Azeri snipers.

Justice minister Hrayr Tovmasyan explains this by the fact that this bill may bring additional expenses for the government. “The social benefit of such convention is very high and valuable, however, by ratifying the convention the government takes on the responsibility for compensation, which should be consistent with the policy implemented in that sector,” says Hrayr Tovmasyan. The Justice minister believes this convention is not in line with the social policy implemented by the government as anyone that is low income and suffers from an attack can apply to court and demand compensation. He assures that the government would come back to that bill whenever there are resources that could cover this financial responsibility.

The main reason why the authorities do not want to ratify this convention is that ratification of this convention would mean that different state institutions will have to be more cautious and persistent in discovering crimes. Currently the low-enforcement bodies such as the police, investigation bodies, military police and security service do not bear responsibility for not discovering crimes. Specifically related to the March 1 clampdown, the authorities claim that they are not able to discover the crime and find the culprits. In case of ratifying this convention, the government would have to bear financial responsibility for all cases that it is unable to discover and find out who the culprits of violence are.

Would the government want to be responsible for crimes against its citizens? They would want to be responsible in verbal speeches only; however, they would never want to bear material responsibility for that.

By Avetis Babajanyan