Aravot, Armenia
Oct 20 2009

Armenian court hears suit against opposition paper

by Naira Mamikonyan
"Gind versus Chorrord Ishkhanutyun. The aim is to stop paper from publishing"

The Gind printing house, which has been printing the [pro-opposition]
Chorrord Ishkhanutyun paper until recently, has decided to use all
possible means to stop printing of the paper. Gind has formulated its
suit against the founder of Gind, the Ogostos company, in this very
way – demanding that a court of law in Kentron and Nork-Marash
districts [of Yerevan] should not only arrest the property of the
company but also stop publication of the Chorrord Ishkhanutyun paper.
The matter is that months ago Gind, bypassing the agreement signed
between the founder of the paper and the printing house, unilaterally,
and what is more important, secretly from the paper, without relevant
talks and arrangements, decided to raise the tariff for printing
Chorrord Ishkhanutyun paper.

Months ago, one fine day the printing house sent a bill of debt of
five million drams (about 13,000 dollars), which had accumulated as a
result of the deliberate rise in printing tariffs; and the paper will
no longer be published if it does not pay. The case was sent to court.
The first court hearing, to be chaired by [judge] Gagik Khandanyan,
was scheduled for 9 October. However, the hearing did not take place
on that day, because the judge did not turn up. It was announced that
he was on a business trip and was out of the republic. The court
hearing was postponed, but the matter is that earlier, a month ago, he
had made a decision to arrest the property of Ogostos and wrote in his
decision that it [the decision] could be appealed in the Appeals
Court. No-one applied to the Appeals Court, because such a decision on
the part of the judge was absolute illiteracy. The matter is that
court verdicts on arrest are not subject to being appealed, according
to the Armenian Code of Civil Trials.

Judge Khandanyan came on time yesterday [19 October] and made his
second decision, which from the legal point of view contains a gross
mistake, to put it mildly. He satisfied the motion of the plaintiff
Gind, which demands that the publication of the paper be stopped.

Chorrord Ishkhanutyun knows that Gind’s problem, which, by the way,
had lost two of its "clients" – the [pro-opposition] Haykakan Zhamanak
and Chorrord Ishkhanutyun newspapers, was to prevent the publication
of the paper right from the beginning. Gind secretly raised costs for
publishing Chorrord Ishkhanutyun in order to drive the Ogostos agency
into a corner and arrest its property, and consequently to stop
publishing the paper. Seeing that this is senseless, the printing
house decided to reiterate its demand that the paper’s publication be
stopped.

The court hearing on this case will continue.