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Media Groups Slam Government Re `Unpunished' Attacks On Journalists

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  • Media Groups Slam Government Re `Unpunished' Attacks On Journalists

    Radio Free Europe, Czech republic
    June 30 2004

    Media Groups Slam Government Over `Unpunished' Attacks On Journalists


    By Ruzanna Khachatrian
    30/06/2004 14:15

    Armenia's leading media associations demanded on Tuesday that the
    authorities respect freedom of speech, accusing them of failing to
    identify and punish the perpetrators of unprecedented violence
    against journalists that covered recent opposition demonstrations.

    `We again demand respect for the public's right to receive and the
    journalists' right to spread information and prevention of any
    attempts to infringe on them,' said a joint statement released by the
    Yerevan Press Club, the Armenian Union of Journalists, the Committee
    to Protect Freedom of Speech and the Armenian branch of the U.S.
    Internews organization.

    The statement dismissed as a `farce' the trial earlier this month of
    two men who were fined 100,000 drams ($185) each for taking part in
    the April 5 attack on photojournalists present at an opposition rally
    in downtown Yerevan. They were part of a larger group of burly men
    that tried to disrupt the protest, throwing eggs at its organizers
    and setting off firecrackers. The thugs, who reportedly work for
    government-connected wealthy individuals, went on to indiscriminately
    smash most of the video and still cameras that caught their faces.
    Dozens of police officers led by General Hovannes Varian stood by and
    refused to intervene.

    `Neither the investigating body nor the court showed a desire to
    protect the journalists' right to collect and disseminate
    information, not to mention the fact that the imposed punishment was
    not commensurate with the deed,' the media groups said.

    `We expected that there will be other revelations and trials but
    nothing has been done over the past period to identify the
    perpetrators of the other violent acts,' they added, pointing to the
    beating by the police of four journalists covering the brutal
    break-up of the April 12-13 protest near President Robert Kocharian's
    Yerevan residence.

    One of those journalists, Hayk Gevorgian of the `Haykakan Zhamanak,'
    says that Varian, who is the deputy chief of the national police
    service, personally stole his camera before ordering subordinates to
    attack him. Gevorgian spent two weeks recovering from severe injuries
    sustained during the beating. Ashot Melikian of the Committee to
    Protect Freedom of Speech deplored the fact Varian has faced no
    official inquiries or any disciplinary action over the allegations.

    The joint statement also urged Armenian journalists to close ranks in
    the face of what its signatories see as a government effort to
    further curb press freedoms in the country. According to Boris
    Navasardian, chairman of the Yerevan Press Club (YPC), the Armenian
    media community must consider violence against a single journalist an
    affront to free speech.

    The Armenian media's coverage of the recent standoff between the
    government and the opposition was scrutinized at a seminar held by
    the YPC on Tuesday. Levon Barseghian, chairman of the Asparez Club of
    journalists in Armenia's second city of Gyumri, described it as
    largely `distorted,' singling out local television stations for
    criticism.

    `TV and radio stations seem to have an invisible bar which they are
    not allowed to cross in order to speak more freely and criticize the
    authorities, especially Robert Kocharian,' Barseghian told the
    seminar. He was particularly scathing about the Kocharian-controlled
    state television's coverage of the confrontation, denouncing it as
    `adverse and disastrous.'

    In Navasardian's words, this situation makes even more urgent the
    reopening of A1+, Armenia's sole major private network that was often
    critical of the authorities. A1+ was controversially forced off the
    air more than two years ago. The authorities have since resisted
    strong international pressure for its reopening. The continuing ban
    on A1+ is the main reason why the Armenian media was recently rated
    `not free' by Freedom House, a New York-based human rights group, for
    the second consecutive year.

    Addressing the Council of Europe last week, Kocharian disputed
    assertions that Armenia's electronic have lacked diversity and
    pluralism since A1+'s closure and urged the Strasbourg-based
    organization to remove the issue from the agenda of its ongoing
    monitoring of his administration's human rights record.

    But Navasardian disagreed, saying that A1+'s return to the airwaves
    is `the only chance to have an independent electronic media outlet in
    Armenia.' `Journalists or a group of journalists do not have the
    resources and the political cover to set up such a television
    channel,' he said. `That is the reason why we talk so much about
    A1+.'
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