European Court Rules Against Armenia

This is a very interesting development. Here's what we know so far:

In a first-ever ruling relating to Armenia, the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday declared illegal the arrest of an Armenian opposition activist who helped to organize an anti-government demonstration more than four years ago.

The plaintiff, Armen Mkrtchian, was detained by the police along with several other members of the radical opposition Hanrapetutyun (Republic) party after actively participating in an unsanctioned rally in Yerevan on May 14, 2002. He was released after being fined a largely symbolic 500 drams ($1.5) under Armenia’s Soviet-era Administrative Code.

Mkrtchian took his case to the Strasbourg-based court in November 2002...A panel of seven European Court judges, among them Armenian Alvina Gyulumian, unanimously accepted the 35-year-old oppositionist’s arguments, ruling that his brief detention violated a key article of the European Convention on Human Rights which takes precedence over all Armenian laws and government directives.

The Armenian authorities used the Administrative Code to arrest hundreds of opposition supporters and activists during the presidential elections of February-March 2003 and the April-May 2004 opposition campaign of street protests against President Robert Kocharian.

With elections just around the corner, it is important for the international community to look back to previous such instances and make sure they never happen again. We can't call ourselves a republic if the expression of free speech is nonexistent.

Source: ArmeniaLiberty