Tuesday, April 30 2024 11:12

ArmInfo.  Former Armenian Ombudsman Arman Tatoyan made a comment in which he called the  statement made on April 29 by the country's Ministry of Justice regarding the legal framework and activities of the commission related to border demarcation and security shameful and highly reprehensible.

Tatoyan is convinced that in this way the Ministry of Justice made an  unsuccessful attempt to "justify" and cover up the politically  unacceptable decisions of the Armenian government and its head.

The human rights activist emphasized that the activities of this  commission under the leadership of the Vice Prime Minister contradict  the foundations of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia and  its international obligations.

Tatoyan drew attention to the fact that this is a formally created  commission, which operates by a separate legal act, referring to  general rules of procedural nature.

"Neither the government nor the head of government has such powers.  The Ministry of Justice justifies the commission's 'mandate' with the  name of the commission, and then states that the name of the  commission shows that the commission received this mandate from the  government and its head.

It is not even possible to come up with such a justification, because  in law it cannot be that a committee of dubious origin is given a  name and the status of this committee is determined only by the name  (without assigning specific powers).

In particular, not a single act states what the competence of this  commission or its members is, what decisions it makes, what specific  issues, etc.

It is impossible to have a body performing specific work without a  legal basis and without securing a specific status in practice, being  content only with the fact that this body has a name and draws powers  from its name," Tatoyan noted.

According to him, according to the logic of power, if you want to  judge people for violations of the law, you need to create some kind  of body, call it, for example, a "court", and this will be enough for  this body to start judging people, and there will be no the need to  determine specific powers, tasks, decision-making procedures, etc.

"This is a logic that fundamentally contradicts the rule of law and  the foundations of the Constitution. On behalf of this commission,  the Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes a statement that contains  serious negative specific consequences for the security of the  Republic of Armenia, grossly violates the rights of border residents  and the population of the Republic of Armenia as a whole (life, free  movement , property, etc.).

The absolutely illegal nature of the statement of the Ministry of  Justice is also indicated by the fact that, according to the  statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of  Armenia dated April 19, 2024, an agreement was reached between  Armenia and Azerbaijan to complete work on agreeing on the draft  regulations on the joint activities of the commission for demarcating  the state border by July 1, 2024

That is, it turns out that even without regulations, this commission  is already functioning and, without regulations, makes statements  that grossly violate human rights and undermine the security of the  Republic of Armenia," noted the former Ombudsman of Armenia.

Tatoyan called all the above excuses useless and unacceptable  political decisions. According to him, this is evidenced by the  statements of the head of government and various government officials  that the demarcation has not yet begun, and that it will begin after  the planned decisions in Tavush.

"In addition, a logical question arises: if demarcation has not yet  begun, then how can the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of  this commission, distribute a statement from which it can be  concluded that what is happening in Tavush is the result of the work  of this commission, if this commission is engaged in demarcation,  i.e. those issues that still need to be resolved at the Tavush site.

In line with the completely wrong and absolutely reprehensible  [political] public agenda about the surrender or non-surrender of  territories, the Azerbaijani armed forces are approaching our  villages, and the government is making statements recognizing the  jurisdiction of Azerbaijan," Tatoyan added.

Earlier the Ministry of Justice of Armenia issued a statement in  which, using fictitious narratives, it tried to justify the fact that  the Armenian authorities surrendered the sovereign territories of the  Republic of Armenia to Azerbaijan.