Armenia ruling force MP on Freedom House statement: Swearing should be forbidden

  News.am  
Armenia – Feb 7 2022

Swearing should be forbidden. Swearing as a moral norm has been banned in Armenia, it is banned, and I hope it will remain banned. Vladimir Vardanyan, a member of the ruling majority “Civil Contract” Faction of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia and chair of the NA Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs, told this to reporters in the NA Monday—and referring to the Freedom House statement where this non-profit organization expressed concern over the first criminal conviction of an Armenian citizen under the new provision of the Armenian Criminal Code criminalizing “serious insults” against government officials.

"Swearing as a category should be excluded from public discourse in general. Unfortunately, through the spread of social media—when a person, in fact, would not otherwise swear because he would have been subjected to at least some moral reproach—, under the influence of social media, it has become a field that can lead to much more criminogenic phenomena. Swearing is not a manifestation of freedom of speech. Swearing is one of the legitimate cases of curtailing of freedom of speech, when, in fact, even the ECHR will not provide protection to the person who cursed. The purpose of passing the [aforesaid Armenian] law is to correct this situation," Vardanyan added.

https://news.am/eng/news/685629.html