THE WORLD PRESS FREEDOM COMMITTEE EXPRESSES ITS PROFOUND CONCERN ABOUT THE FATE OF NICOL PASHINYAN
yan-5/
2009/10/03 | 15:34
Society Politics
The World Press Freedom Committee -an organization representing 44
press freedom groups from throughout the world- expresses its profound
concern about the fate of Nicol Pashinyan, editor-in-chief of the
country’s leading newspaper, Haykakan Zhamanak (Armenian Times),
who was arrested on July 1 after he voluntarily came out of hiding.
Mr. Pashinyan, whose trial will start soon, is accused of very
serious crimes, including inciting mass disorder and assaulting a
public official. But the truth is he was just exercising his right to
free expression during a peaceful political rally on March 1, 2008,
which ended up being brutally repressed by riot police. The bloody
incident left ten people dead.
A 2008 US State Department report on human rights concluded that, "some
of the deaths may have occurred from purposeful arbitrary killing,
misuse of crowd control equipment […] or some combination of these
factors." The report goes on to conclude that no investigations were
conducted into the behavior of the security forces during the incident.
Mr. Pashinyan, whose writings had been very critical of the government,
went into hiding after that fateful day and continued writing for
his newspaper. After the Armenian Parliament passed a resolution of
amnesty for all those implicated in the March 1 incident, he decided
to come of out of hiding only to be immediately arrested and taken
to a former KGB prison.
The arrest took place in blatant defiance of the amnesty resolution
and of a resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe (PACE), which reminded the Armenian authorities that "the
amnesty will also apply to those persons charged in relation to the
events of 1 and 2 March 2008." The PACE resolution also urges the
Armenian authorities to allow those charged in relation with that
incident to remain free during the duration of their legal proceedings.
Arresting a journalist because of his professional activity is a
serious attack not only on his fundamental human rights, including
press freedom, but also on his audience, who thus is deprived of
important information about issues of public interest. By keeping
him in prison, you also hold his audience hostage to an arbitrary
decision that attempts against fundamental democratic principles.
The harassment and illegal detention of members of the media represent
grave violations of fundamental human rights postulates enshrined not
only in the Armenian Constitution but also in international covenants,
such as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
of which your country is signatory.
Article 19 of the Declaration states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression and opinion; this
right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and
to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media
and regardless of frontiers.
Your Excellency, we urge you to exercise your presidential power and
influence to grant the immediate release of Mr. Pashinyan from prison
thus showing the international community your government does respect
freedom of the press and due process.
Respectfully:
Richard Winfield Javier Sierra Chairman Projects Director World
Press Freedom Committee World Press Freedom Committee
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
