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The Armenian Justice Minister says it is common for prisoners to sew their lips or eyes shut or to cut off their little finger, and prisoners inflict damage to themselves also in such developed countries as Hungary and Estonia.

“They just decide to do something for the sake of freedom,” Hrayr Tovmasyan told reporters in parliament while commenting on the recent protests among prisoners when some of them sewed their lips and eyes shut and one cut off his little finger.

According to him, prisoners who sew their lips have holes on them, and it is a common thing for them to sew their lips shut. The Minister compared it to girls wearing earrings.

Referring to problems in prisons, Mr Tovmasyan said that the Justice Ministry had never tried to hide the problems that exist in the penitentiary system.

“These problems are in the focus of attention of the government. I can say openly that when I was just appointed to this position, we had nearly AMD 1 billion, and many were saying that we had to renovate the penitentiary institutions and to improve their conditions with these funds. It is of course necessary to renovate and improve them but improving the infrastructures is like pouring water into a holed bucket,” said the Minister.

The solution lays in optimization of penitentiary institutions, he noted. Armavir penitentiary institution will be ready in a year, and another big facility will be created later, designed to hold 2,000-3,000 prisoners, Mr Tovmasyan concluded.