TOO EARLY FOR FREE SPEECH IN THE CAUCASUS?
Giorgi Lomsadze
EurasiaNet
May 5 2010
NY
Azerbaijan and Armenia now share a double billing for their "not free"
media, if little else. At least by Freedom House’s reckoning.
"The time for free speech has not arrived yet," Armenian Press Club
Chairman Boris Navasardian told colleagues. The Committee to Protect
Journalists partly blames the 2008 post-election clashes that split
Armenian media along political fault lines, it says.
The view from Baku is no less merry. Civil society activists and
reporters chastise the government for what they describe as attempts
to intimidate independent media.
Meanwhile, Georgia (along with Ukraine) heads the Freedom House FSU
pack with a tag of "partly free." No news on how that hit President
Mikheil Saakashvili, who recently declared international concerns
about Georgia’s media freedom to be "total bullshit."