JOURNALIST’S BEATING SPARKS CONCERN ABOUT PRESS FREEDOM IN ARMENIA
By Emil Danielyan

Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
Tuesday, September 19, 2006

The reported beating of the editor of a leading Armenian newspaper
has sparked domestic and international concerns about the state of
press freedom in Armenia. The September 6 incident was the latest
in a series of attacks against local journalists critical of the
government. Armenian media associations, Western watchdogs, and even
some state officials in Yerevan fear that they could become more
frequent in the run-up to parliamentary elections due early next year.

In an extraordinary statement on September 12, the Yerevan office of
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it is
"deeply concerned over recent incidents of violence and intimidation
against local journalists that have obstructed their professional
duties and infringed upon the freedom of expression." It urged the
Armenian authorities to "undertake prompt measures to ensure the
safety of media professionals."

Armen Harutiunian, Armenia’s human rights ombudsman and a former aide
to President Robert Kocharian, echoed these concerns in unusually blunt
terms on September 14. "Freedom of speech is really in danger," he
told a news conference, faulting law-enforcement authorities for their
failure, both now and in the past, to identify and punish the guilty.

Hovannes Galajian of Iravunk, an opposition-linked bi-weekly, claims
to have been ambushed and beaten up by two burly men with very short
haircuts outside his Yerevan home in broad daylight. Police promptly
announced a criminal investigation into what six local journalist
organizations and other civic groups jointly condemned as "yet another
act of terror against a journalist." But nobody has been arrested or
questioned so far.

The Iravunk staff have attributed the incident to their hard-hitting
coverage of the government and its loyalists. They have pointed out
in particular that one of their recent articles attacked and derided
the powerful Defense Minister Serge Sarkisian, effectively implicating
the latter in Galajian’s reported beating.

"I don’t fight against or punish pitiful people," Sarkisian angrily
shot back on September 7, in remarks that only stoked the furor. In a
front-page editorial, Haykakan Zhamanak, Armenia’s best-selling daily,
advised Sarkisian to look for "pitiful people" in his entourage. If
there is anything the Armenian media can be blamed for, wrote the
paper, it is the fact that "we tolerate [Sarkisian] and the likes of
him at the helm of our state."

Galajian’s description of his attackers matches the appearance of
two-dozen thugs that indiscriminately attacked journalists covering
an opposition demonstration in Yerevan in April 2004. Scores of riot
police stood by and looked on as these thugs smashed video and still
cameras that filmed their attempts to disrupt the protest. They
were widely believed to be bodyguards of "oligarchs" loyal to the
ruling regime.

Two prominent opposition politicians and a human rights activist,
who were also beaten around that time, gave very similar descriptions
of their attackers.

Galajian reported the assault just weeks after a Molotov cocktail was
hurled at the offices of Chorrord Ishkhanutyun, another paper highly
critical of the Kocharian administration. One of its freelance
correspondents, Gagik Shamshian, has for months faced alleged
harassment by Mher Hovannisian, mayor of Yerevan’s rundown Nubarashen
suburb, who was cast in negative light in his news reports. Shamshian
claimed to have been attacked and robbed by a group of men led by
Hovannisian’s brother and lodged a complaint to the police last
June. The latter responded by launching criminal proceedings against
the reporter, citing grave "complaints" filed against him by local
residents. Police officers searched and sealed off Shamshian’s rented
apartment in Nubarashen in early August, effectively forcing him to
move out of the district.

In another media-related development, the young editor of the
independent newspaper Zhamanak Yerevan, Arman Babajanian, was sentenced
to four years in prison on September 8 on charges of illegally avoiding
military service. The sentence was quite harsh by Armenian standards,
as individuals convicted of draft evasion are usually jailed for
between two and three years.

Babajanian, who was arrested in June, admitted to draft dodging during
his two-week trial but insisted that he would not have been prosecuted
if his paper supported the government. Most of his fellow newspaper
editors have also alleged political motives behind the case. "Given the
history of politicized prosecution of journalists in Armenia, we are
skeptical about the appropriateness of this sentence," the executive
director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists,
Joel Simon, said in a September 11 statement.

Some local journalists fear that all of these cases might be part of
a government effort to crack down on Armenia’s diverse and vibrant
print media, which is dominated by pro-opposition publications. The
authorities already maintain tight control over the news reporting
of every Armenian television and radio station, something that they
consider vital for their continued grip on power. (The only TV channel
not controlled by Kocharian was controversially pulled off the air
in 2002.) The newspapers are seen as less of a threat to the regime
due to their small circulations.

Meanwhile, on September 15 Kocharian granted top state awards to a
dozen editors and journalists from TV stations, news agencies, and
newspapers controlled by or loyal to him. Five of them were given the
Soviet-era title of "honored journalist," which Kocharian restored
after he came to power in 1998.

Ironically, the presidential awards were timed to coincide with the
15th anniversary of Armenia’s declaration independence from the Soviet
Union, which will be officially celebrated on September 21.

(Statement by the Armenian president’s office, Aravot, September 15;
Statement by the OSCE office in Yerevan, September 12; Statement by
the Committee to Protect Journalists, September 11; Haykakan Zhamanak,
RFE/RL Armenia Report, August 9)