KOCHARIAN DEFENDS CONTINUING MEDIA BLACKOUT

Radio Liberty
March 17 2008
Czech Republic

President Robert Kocharian defended through a spokesman on Monday
his administration’s continuing refusal to allow Armenia’s leading
independent and pro-opposition newspapers and online publications to
resume news reporting.

All of those media outlets suspended or were forced to suspend their
work as a result of a 20-day state of emergency imposed by Kocharian
during the March 1 clashes in Yerevan between riot police and thousands
of opposition supporters. In a decree signed on Thursday, Kocharian
said they can resume their work so long as they do not publish
"obviously false or destabilizing information."

Officers of the National Security Service (NSS) prevented the seven
national newspapers critical of the government from publishing the
next day after examining their content. The NSS also maintained
the blockage of the websites of at least three Armenian online news
services as well as RFE/RL’s Armenian service. Still, the authorities
did allow local radio stations to resume the retransmission of RFE/RL’s
Armenian-language news programs.

Victor Soghomonian, Kocharian’s press secretary, said all of the papers
in question sought to report "obviously false information" in their
Friday editions sent to the printers. Speaking at a news conference,
Soghomonian cited specific newspaper reports that accused the Armenian
authorities of underreporting the number of people killed on March 1,
described the arrested opposition activists as political prisoners and
said that many of them were mistreated in custody. He also faulted
the opposition daily "Haykakan Zhamanak" for trying to publish an
interview with Nikol Pashinian, its fugitive editor who played a major
part in the rallies organized by opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian.

Soghomonian further made clear that the authorities will continue
to block Internet users’ access to local online publications for
the duration of emergency rule. He argued that government monitoring
and censorship of their reports is much more difficult than that of
print media.

In a joint statement issued on Friday, the publications affected by
the severe restrictions brushed aside Kocharian’s Thursday decree
as a "wretched attempt to mislead the international community and
the Armenian public." A separate statement by the Yerevan Press Club
and seven other civic groups condemned the censorship as "illegal"
and demanded its complete abolition.

Boris Navasardian, the YPC chairman, argued on Monday that the
censorship was not formalized by any written presidential decree or
government directive and that NSS officers are enforcing it solely on
the basis of verbal orders from their superiors. He said that runs
counter to an article of the Armenian Criminal Code that makes it
a crime to obstruct journalists’ work.. "If the prosecutor’s office
considers itself a guardian of law, it must open a criminal case in
connection with that," he told RFE/RL.

Navasardian also said Armenia’s leading TV stations and other
pro-government media are only fanning post-election tensions in the
country with their "one-sided" coverage of the March 1 clashes and
the ensued developments. "Everyone must realize that the society
is not unanimous today," he said. "If there is no open debate, no
open exchange of information, those differing interpretations of the
situation will deepen. And that means political polarization will
deepen too."