ECHR receives thousands of complaints against Armenia

/AzerNews/

By Mushvig Mehdiyev

Over 2,000 complaints against Armenia have been registered at the European Court Human Rights from 2002 to 2014, according to the Armenian Representation at the European Court of Human Rights.

Gevorg Kostanyan, Prosecutor General, who represents Armenia at the ECHR, said at a ceremony dedicated to the 10th anniversary of his country's representation at the ECHR on December 15 that the court has issued about 49 sentences on Armenia as of November 1, 2014, urging the country to pay approximately 15.3 million euros in compensation.

So far, 574,000 euros or 3.8 percent of the sum has been paid off, Kostanyan noted.

"Only 146,000 euros or 26 percent of the payment has been made without using the state budget," he said, pledging to repay the whole amount gradually.

Oleksandr Pavlyuk, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Armenia, called on the government to improve the situation based on the ECHR verdicts.

Earlier in November, the ECHR filed three separate cases against Armenia, making the country eligible to pay a total of 160,000 euros in compensation.

All three cases involved a property located on Byuzand Street in downtown Yerevan. The property was reportedly expropriated by the state to be used in town planning. In all three cases, the plaintiffs did not get any state offer as a compensation for the seized property.

The lawyers believe that the main reason behind the continuous ECHR decisions against Armenia is the current systematic problems in Armenia's legislation.

The Justice Ministry agreed that the discrepancies in the legislation increase the number of the negative verdicts by the ECHR against Armenia.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has earlier supported an option to cancel Armenia's mandate at the ECHR. Failure by the Armenian government to organize a transparent and fair contest to elect a judge for the ECHR has created a serious challenge for the PACE, even putting it in question whether to halt choosing one of the three candidates presented by Armenia or not.

Serious human rights violations in Armenia have turned the country into a target of criticism by several international organizations, including the Freedom House, which approved the former Soviet state as a partly free country, lacking satisfactory conditions in terms of the civil liberties and political rights.