SOUTH CAUCASUS – EU COOPERATION DEPENDS ON PRESS FREEDOM
By Anahit Hovsepian, Germany
Azg Daily
May 7 2010
Armenia
Markus Lioning, the newly-appointed Human Rights Commissioner
of Germany (Liberal Democratic Party) on his May 4 interview to
"Der Tagesspiegel" detailed fight against death penalty and press
freedom issues.
"Press and opinion freedom is the mother of all freedoms. Dictators
cannot stay long in a place, where people have the right of freely
expressing their opinion, and where the journalists are free in their
publications", said the Commissioner giving the example of the South
Caucasus countries – Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. According to
him, these three states have press freedom problems, but at the same
time they want to cooperate closely with the European Union, and that
cooperation should be conditioned by press freedom guarantees.