According to the national Penitentiary Service subordinate to the Armenian Justice Ministry, 21 persons serving prison sentences or held in detention have died since the beginning of the year, up from 11 deaths reported during the whole of 2024. Eight of those inmates reportedly committed suicide.
The latest fatality occurred over the weekend at the Armavir prison about 50 kilometers west of Yerevan. Prison authorities have yet to specify what caused the death of a 71-year-old convict held there.
The sharp rise in prison deaths has prompted serious concern from local human rights campaigners. Sergei Gabrielian, who leads a team of civic activists monitoring prison conditions in Armenia, said that it first and foremost results from inmates’ lack of access to adequate medical care and even medicines.
“The monitoring group has repeatedly sent information about people deprived of their liberty — people who, unfortunately, have died — to the Health Ministry, noting that these people have health problems,” he said.
The ministry has largely ignored those complaints, claimed Gabrielian. He also accused prison medics of discriminating against “vulnerable” prisoners.
“People who are not members of a vulnerable group receive medical services sooner,” he said.
Mariam Tsatrian, a spokeswoman for the Health Ministry, dismissed such claims as “amateurish.”
“When talking about prison deaths, one must not generalize things and speak in an accusatory tone,” said Tsatrian. “There is a body that conducts forensic medical examinations, and one must … respect conclusions that are provided by it. Have all those conclusions been studied [by critics?]”
Tsovinar Tadevosian, the newly appointed head of the Penitentiary Service, January 8, 2025.
The current head of the Penitentiary Service, Tsovinar Tadevosian, was handpicked by Justice Minister Srbuhi Galian and appointed to the post in early January 2025, becoming the first woman to run Armenia’s prisons. The 33-year-old Tadevosian, who is reportedly a friend of Galian, previously headed a division of the service dealing with “social, psychological and legal affairs.”
Human rights activists say overcrowding is another reason why prison conditions in Armenia remain harsh and regularly lead to inmate deaths.
Just over 2,700 people are held in Armenian prisons at present. Most of them have not yet been convicted and sentenced by courts, a fact also decried by some activists. They complain that law-enforcement authorities continue to heavily resort to pre-trial arrests, especially in criminal cases involving opposition figures and other critics of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Convicts accounted for a bigger share of Armenia’s prison population that stood at almost 3,900 a decade ago. The country’s crime rate has risen significantly since then.
