“Violence and weapons will solve no issue in Armenia. Only the Republic of Armenia has a monopoly on legally using force. All the necessary institutions and mechanisms have already been created by the Armenian Constitution to solve certain issues, conflicts, complaints and misunderstandings,” said President Sargsyan during the session, dedicated to the National Security Officer’s Day.

According to him, National Security Service and other law enforcement structures have the right to eliminate any threat to the Armenian state.

“I think that your consistent actions and balanced approaches during the developments in July of 2016 are the best evidences of my words. To all those who will try to pursue personal or group interests by illegal methods, I advise to avoid similar adventures,” President Sargsyan said.

According to Serzh Sargsyan, some people try to extremize the security-freedom correlation, turning it into an absolute dilemma.

“This contrast is fake and acceptable for me. Security and freedom are not opposed but rather interrelated and interoperable elements,” he said.

Touching upon the fight against corruption, President Sargsyan suggested following the researches and ratings from international structures.

“Armenia should not register any decline in fight against corruption even if we take the perception of corruption instead of the corruption itself. We need to discover all the shortcomings that bring the perception that we have now in Armenia,” he said.

Touching upon the attacks committed against the Armenian digital infrastructures, Serzh Sargsyan said that only in 2017 Armenia has prevented over 1,5m various attacks, including attempts of hacking state information systems and official web pages.

“Of course, I am not speaking now about the small issues. We are not going to give simple answers by restricting freedom of speech or the right to disseminate information. We will not have internet censorship in Armenia. What is not restricted by the law is practically allowed. I think that the Armenian public is mature enough to be able to solve these issues by mechanism of self-regulation,” the President of Armenia concluded.