This was the assurance given by Edward Hovhannisyan, head of the Abovyan Detention Center. "It's just that we have a few repeat offenders or people with long sentences, who approach convicts new to the 'zone' and tell them, 'Sister, we know how things are here and we'll tell you what to do and how to do it,' and then they eat the food given to that new convict," said the Detention Center head, "Those are the cunning ones.  But the new convicts usually adapt quickly and learn to avoid them."

The Abovyan Detention Center is the only such facility planned for women and juvenile detainees.  There are currently 126 women here, from 19 to 77 years old.  90 of them are convicts, and the remaining 36 are detainees.  "The center hosts people awaiting trial as well as those that have already been convicted.  Some of the convicts are those who have already received their sentences and have to serve them here in solitary confinement.  But we don't have the conditions to carry out that sentence here, so we have isolated a few cells for that purpose," said Hovhannisyan.

Artificially Created Problems at Center

Construction work is underway at the Abovyan center; a new building is being erected.  The one currently being used is in hazardous conditions.  It has 16 cells, some of which are in a semi-basement area.  They are cells in the direct sense of the word.  Each is only about 12 square meters in area.  Usually, such cells host around 6 people.  If all of them stand up together, there is virtually no room left in the cell to move about.

The caged windows on both sides of these cells are not only small; they are only halfway above ground level.  There is almost no natural lighting even during the brightest hours of day.

Conditions are greatly different in the cells located on the first floor of the facility.  They have large areas and big windows, and the ceilings are very high.  The detainees in these cells are in more or less bearable conditions.

According to Hovhannisyan, the decision to place a prisoner in one cell or the another is no reflection of any personal attitude towards that person, "It doesn't make a difference to us if the cell is on the first floor or in the basement," he said.  However, detainee Silva Asatryan said, based on her personal experience, that the choice of cell was a method used by the management to put pressure on the prisoner.

Asatryan was imprisoned during the fall of 2005. She was detained for eight months at the Central Detention Center in Yerevan and was then moved to the Abovyan facility.  At that time, the head of the facility was Arsen Afrikyan.  For seven months now, Eduard Hovhannisyan has occupied this post. 

"In Afrikyan's time, they allowed us to have electric stoves in our cells all year round.  That replaced the function of a refrigerator for us, because even one or two days after our relatives brought us food we could heat it up and eat it.  The new head took those stoves away, because that suited him well.  At least before that the prisoners weren't hungry and therefore they weren't angry.  The food they give us here is not fit to be eaten, it is only fit for animals," said Asatryan.

"I don't know how things were under the previous head.  But I know that there is a certain amount of electricity that has been allocated to the prison over the period of a year.  That is why we collected the stoves as soon as the weather got warm and why we will distribute them again when it gets colder.  If we don't conserve energy, we will exceed our limits," explained Hovhannisyan.

As for the food prepared at the detention center, the said that it was cooked in the same way for everyone and that it met all the norms set by the government.  "There are people who complain and say that we should cook the beans separately from the macaroni.  Or someone might like the rice cooked the way their mother does it and does not like the rice we cook here.  What can we do about that?" asked the prison warden.

"The biggest of problems is the telephone.  We used to call every day, sometimes even twice a day, under the previous warden.  It didn’t cost the prison anything, because we used telephone cards which our relatives brought us.  Hovhannisyan put an end to that too, now we can only make calls once every four days," continued Asatryan.

"It’s a good thing we allow them to call once every four days.  There is constant activity at this prison.  Inspectors come in, as do lawyers and reporters.  After all, we take detainees from here to court, bring them back, search them…  In order for a prisoner to make a phone call, someone has to open their cell and bring them to the phone.  But that someone could be busy at that moment with a reporter or an inspector… I only have four workers who have to conduct all these duties at each shift.  They need rest too.  If we were to calculate the amount of time they needed for all that, they would be unable to manage," said Hovhannisyan, without explaining how the previous head had managed to do it all,

Asatryan spoke about how she had resisted the 'new order' and had even demanded an explanation as to why the number of permitted calls was reduced even though the number of prisoners had not got up.  "That was the reason.  They came early in the morning and told me, 'Get your things together, you're moving to a cell down below,'" she recalled.

The head of the Detention Center claimed, however, that Asatryan's cell was changed because of complaints from her cellmates.  "Silva paints, and the smell of oil paint bothered her cellmates.  She was also in constant conflict with her cellmates," said Hovhanissyan, emphasizing that Asatryan had problems getting along with her new cellmates as well.

When we were talking to Asatryan in her basement cell, one of her cellmates, Anahit, would constantly interrupt, contradict her statements and defend the prison management.  The latter then recalled an argument that she had had with Silva, saying that Silva had unfairly hurt her.  This led to a new argument between the two women. We learned later that Anahit had been called by Arman Sayadyan, deputy head of security at the prison, just minutes before we entered the cell.  "Who called her and why… Yes, I'd called her to my office for everyday matters here at the prison," Sayadyan later explained to us.

"They force people to complain against me.  They have given me the reputation of a wild and abnormal person.  But I assure you that there have not been any conflicts.  I was only told of problems in my cell after I was moved," said Asatryan and further explained, "They moved one of our cellmates, Gohar, to the convicts' section, the 'zone'.  Before she left, she told me that she had been forced to complain against me."

This was corroborated by Asatryan's current cellmates, even Anahit.

"The other two people who complained were actually rewarded by the prison management.  Nano continues to remain in detention, although she is a convict and should have been moved to the convicts' section long ago, while Seda has got a paid job [Names have been changed to protect privacy - A. D.],"insisted Asatryan.

"That is fiction.  There is another convict in the 'zone' who was sentenced along with Nano and their relations are hostile.  We are keeping Nano in the detainment section and the other convict in the 'zone' out of security concerns.  Seda is still in detention, so we cannot give her a job.  We can only hire convicts in the housekeeping section," Hovhannisyan assured us.

Despite the assurances that the prison head had given us, Seda herself told us that she was working and was in charge of distributing food to the detainees.  She even mentioned that she received the job after Asatryan had been moved from their cell.

We should also note that we spoke with more than ten detainees at the prison.  Besides Asatryan's former cellmates and Anahit, the others complained of the food as well. They also spoke of a lack of medication, or rather its almost complete absence.  But the prison head insisted on the contrary, "We regularly receive medication and distribute it among the ill," he said.