STRASBOURG. - It is quite clear that media freedom is the core of any democracy. If the freedom of media is ensured, the democracy has a chance. If journalists are deprived of their right to cover things as they see them and if they are attacked, then the democracy is endangered and many nations become hostages of their own autocratic regimes.

Member of the Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Samvel Farmanyan, who is also an MP of the National Assembly of Armenia (NA), said the aforementioned at the discussion of the report “Attacks against journalists and media freedom in Europe”by Volodymyr Ariev at PACE session on Tuesday.

He noted that he was not going to talk about Armenia because there was no reference to Armenia in the report and fortunately the country has good indexes in terms of media freedom.

“What I am going to talk about is the amazing reference to Nagorno-Karabakh in paragraph 9. I would call it a quite manipulative reference, where Mr Ariev has put the following phrasing: "Nagorno-Karabakh is the part of Azerbaijan and it is a non-transparent and lawless area." And a simple question comes up: Why is this reference there? The reference is there simply because the Azeri government needs that. Do you think that the Azeri government needs it because they care about media freedom? Never. They care more about the media freedom in Nagorno-Karabakh but not in Azerbaijan.  All of us know well what is going on in Azerbaijan. It’s really ridiculous.

And another question comes up: Why has honorable Mr Ariev put this reference there?  Unfortunately this is not because Mr Ariev paid a visit to Nagorno-Karabakh or because he carried out a fact-finding mission. He has not even used the Freedom House report “Without Borders,”where Nagorno-Karabakh has better position than Azerbaijan itself. It’s because as we see from his interview to Azerbaijani press, where he apologizes in front of Ilham Aliyev saying that his grandma is an Azerbaijani.  This is his wording. Finally, we should remember that we are not in a battlefield, we are not hostages and I know how tired you are of all these Armenian-Azerbaijani fighting,” Farmanyan noted, urging to support the presented amendments.

“Let’s send a clear message to President Aliyev that he should find new markets for trading instead of Strasbourg,” he concluded.

In the report entitled “Attacks against journalists and media freedom in Europe,” Volodymyr Ariev refers to issues related to media freedom in conflict zones, noting: “The Assembly furthermore notes with deep concern that the protection of media freedom under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ETS No. 5) is also absent in other territories of member States which are de facto controlled by separatist regimes, namely in Nagorno-Karabakh of Azerbaijan, Abkhazia and South Ossetia of Georgia and Transnistria of the Republic of Moldova. Therefore, the Assembly pays particular tribute to the few investigative journalists who dare shed light on the situation in those otherwise totally non-transparent and lawless areas.”