YOUTH ACTIVIST PERSECUTED FOR REPORTING ABUSE OF SPECIAL

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 YEREVAN 000645 SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPT FOR DRL AND EUR/CARC E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREL AM SUBJECT: YOUTH ACTIVIST PERSECUTED FOR REPORTING ABUSE OF SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN YEREVAN 00000645 001.2 OF 002 (U) Sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly. -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (SBU) The Prosecutor General's Office has pressed charges of "false crime reporting" against an environmental activist who went public with reports about instances of sexual and other abuse at a state-run boarding school for children with special needs. The activist and local human rights monitors have denounced the charges as trumped-up retaliation for the activist's high-profile civic activism, and have called for an impartial investigation into the conditions at all state-run special needs schools. END SUMMARY. -------------- CIVIL SOCIETY ACTIVIST BLOWS WHISTLE ON ABUSE -------------- ¶2. (SBU) According to the civil society activist Mariam Sukhudian, from April-June 2008 she and a group of fellow youth activists served as volunteers in Nubarashen Special School Number 11 as part of a UNDP small grants project (NOTE: Nubarashen is one of Yerevan's 12 administrative districts. END NOTE.) The volunteers renovated a computer room, taught various subjects and skills, recorded audio-books, etc. Throughout their work and interaction with children the volunteers observed and heard about multiple problems and abuses at the school, including the presence of children with without special needs; poor food quality; poor sanitary conditions; exploitation of children by the school's director and staff for their household chores; severe punishment and beatings; and several instances of sexual abuse by a teacher. ¶3. (SBU) Suzan Simonian, a reporter for Armenian Public TV, covered the volunteers' findings and aired reports in November 2008 about the alleged situation in the school. She included Sukhudian's video interview of a schoolgirl where she talked about sexual harassment of girls by one of the male teachers, as well as interviews with former students of the school who all backed up the allegations. Simonian also interviewed the school principal and the teacher in question, both of whom categorically denied the accusations. In the months following the airing of Simonian's report, management at Public TV laid off a number of reporters -- reportedly due to the economic crisis -- and Suzan Simonian was one of those to lose her job. -------------- ACTIVIST CHARGED FOR "FALSE CRIME REPORTING" -------------- ¶4. (SBU) According to Sukhudian, after Public TV aired the reports, police called her in, and during questioning she was told that no matter what the investigation reveals, she would be punished for voicing these allegations -- either for late reporting of a crime (if it did happen),or for false crime reporting if the investigation did not reveal any wrongdoing. According to Sukhudian, the schoolgirl who first spoke out, who felt freer to talk since she had already graduated, subsequently changed her testimony under pressure. Sukhudian said that she had recorded on her cell phone the girl telling Sukhudian that she would lie to the police about what happened because her mother was beating her. Sukhudian stated that in February 2009, the investigative body tried to charge the girl for libel (against the teacher) and then in August 2009 charged Sukhudian with false rime reporting, which is punishable with imprisonment up to 5 years. (NOTE: This article of the Criminal Code falls under the June 19 amnesty enacted by parliament, and depending on the length of sentence imposed, if one is imposed at all, Sukhudian could possibly qualify for the amnesty. END NOTE.) -------------- PG'S OFFICE DENIES ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE -------------- ¶5. (SBU) On August 26 the Prosecutor General's Office released a statement declaring that subsequent to Public TV's reports they tasked the Erebuni Police Investigation Department to check the allegations of sexual abuse, which could not be substantiated; the forensic medical examination didn't confirm the report that one of the schoolchildren had been raped; and the students flatly denied the facts of abuse. According to the Prosecutor General Office's statement, the girl interviewed by Simonian stated that she had given false information at the request of Sukhudian. Law enforcement bodies subsequently claimed that Sukhudian did this in retaliation for the school administration not allowing her to misuse UNDP's small grants money. The investigation is ongoing. (NOTE: So far neither UNDP nor UNICEF has made any public statements on the YEREVAN 00000645 002.2 OF 002 affair; however, a UDNP representative told PolFSN at a September 3 meeting that they had not encountered any problems in the implementation of the small grants project administered by Sukhudian, but that they do not usually make statements on individual cases. END NOTE.) -------------- NGOs, MEDIA COME TO ACTIVIST'S DEFENSE -------------- ¶6. (SBU) Prominent local NGOs and various independent online blogs and media outlets subsequently launched a campaign in defense of Sukhudian, and several new media reports surfaced containing interviews of former students at the school who backed up the present allegations of abuse. According to Sukhudian, the entire criminal case against her has been marred by procedural violations, with bias and intimidation against her and her fellow volunteers. In light of the heightened media attention to Sukhudian's plight, on September 14 the office of the Ombudsman announced that it had requested the case materials from law enforcement agencies. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶7. (SBU) That this affair has exposed the lamentable conditions at special needs schools is positive; that the authorities have not taken kindly to civil society allegations of abuse at a state-run institution is not surprising. As recent history has shown, the knee-jerk reaction of authorities to such criticism is to discredit the whistle-blowers and use the judiciary to intimidate and punish them so as to deter others from speaking out. It remains to be seen whether that tactic will succeed in this case, in light of Public TV's own reporting on the alleged abuse and the subsequent surfacing of reports corroborating Sukhudian's initial allegations. In the end, however, this constitutes another case of authorities taking an adversarial approach to any NGO's exposure of alleged human rights abuses. YOVANOVITCH