April 22, 2015

Armenian PACE delegate against LGBT rights

As LGBTnews.am (link in Armenian) reports, Prosperous Armenia MP Naira Zohrabyan, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegation representative from Armenia, has a negative attitude towards LGBT people and tries to stay away from their issues. Zohrabyan recognizes that we shall avoid such depravity to preserve our nation’s moral and ethnic description. MP noted that in Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly she had constantly voted against all the initiatives aimed at the protection of LGBT people.
“…[M]y attitude towards them is negative and it cannot be changed, because I know there is a law of nature, a law of God, commandments, and the class that will go against the commandments of God, will be awarded the punishment of God. Yes, there probably is a class among them that is sick by genetics, another class that has mental disorders, but we shall not pay tribute… I’ll do my best to ensure they fail spreading their metastasis, I say it openly and publicly”, she said.
PACE delegation substitute from Armenia, "Armenian Revolutionary Federation" faction MP Armen Rustamyan finds that LGBT rights are more than protected in Armenia. He also finds that there’s a huge difference between “vulnerable groups” and LGBT people. “Homosexual marriages do not fit into Armenian mentality … and if the family does not reproduce, then it is not a family”, he concluded.

April 21, 2015

The ombudsman's annual report also refers to LGBT issues

Ombudsman’s Annual Report of 2014 on the human rights protection in Armenia has recently been released. The annual report also refers to LGBT rights violations of 2014, submitted by PINK Armenia. Although the submitted information has not been thoroughly included and presented in the annual report, it includes some of the main issues LGBT people face. The report states that the index of society’s intolerance towards LGBT people remains high. The survey on constitutional reform of 2014 showed that 88% of respondents believe that the rights of sexual minority must be limited. Meanwhile, the 2015 UN Universal Periodic Review working group instructed Armenia to take effective legislative and practical measures to ensure the protection of sexual minorities from discrimination. Human rights defenders recorded 1233 cases of discrimination, physical violence, and inadequate response to LGBT people complaints from the side of law enforcement bodies. Acts of discrimination against LGBT people is often expressed in media, spheres of healthcare, education, labor.
“Gay people are in a more vulnerable situation in penitentiary institutions, where they often perform the most humiliating jobs (eg, sewage cleaning), live isolated from other prisoners, no one communicates with them, their utensils and belongings are separated” is said in the Ombudsman's annual report.