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Yerevan-based environmental lawyer Nazeli Vardanyan has condemned lawsuits towards eco-activists in Armenia.
“Prosecution of journalists, attorneys and environmentalist activists is reprehensible everywhere in the world. Even varied worldwide organizations register such circumstances and monitor them. Many nations have already handed legal guidelines that stop such practices. Lawsuits of the sort are known as SLAPP (strategic lawsuit towards public participation). In different phrases, if there are parts of persecution, the circumstances don’t go to court docket. There’s additionally a necessity for comparable amendments in Armenia,” the lawyer advised Panorama.am in an interview on Saturday.
In the meantime, the image is sort of the other in Armenia. Mining firms file lawsuits in court docket to silence environmental activists and win them as a matter of truth. Just lately, Lydian Armenia CJSC gained a case towards reporter and environmentalist Tehmine Yenokyan, who was obliged to pay the corporate greater than 1,200,000 drams. Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Mix CJSC has now sued Oleg Dulgaryan, chairman of the Middle for Neighborhood Mobilization and Help NGO, looking for a denial and a sum of 6,000,000 drams (roughly 14,000 euros).
Vardanyan warns of a rise in lawsuits focusing on environmental activists lately in an effort to strain them.
“It is a harmful development, as a result of it might probably turn into more and more rampant. Though they fail to attain any outcomes as this technique can’t assist silence environmentalists, inconveniences are created for them, together with a burden of financial funds, nervousness, and so on. To start with, this doesn’t convey honor to companies; though they go to court docket to recuperate their fame, it yields the other end result. The general public assesses it very negatively. As well as, the fits make it to worldwide registers as inadmissible circumstances. They attain the European Court docket of Human Rights after which the federal government has to pay compensatory damages to defendants. Why do we’d like all this?” she mentioned.
The lawyer claims Armenia’s poor judicial system has “emboldened” enterprise entities to freely sue their critics.
“The federal government fails to cease them regardless of proudly owning shares in two firms (ZCMC and Lydian Armenia). These two firms have filed the most important variety of lawsuits in court docket. The federal government bears equal accountability for what is going on,” Vardanyan remarked.
The lawyer believes that such circumstances deal a blow to Armenia’s fame.
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