Life in Armenia is no longer possible to imagine without the Internet. Particularly, in such developing countries as Armenia, the Internet freedom has another important significance besides communication and data exchange.
The Internet is a free platform with wide facilities for political actors and civil society activists. The strongly polarized TV companies and the disproportionate coverage of the events unpleasant for the authorities led to a situation that nowadays the Internet is utilized as an alternative means to report information, to advance discussions or to promptly join around different issues.
Compared to other countries, in Armenia there are no or few restrictions regarding freedom of information on the Internet. According to specialists, at this moment there are no threats from the legal point of view as well, though recently there have been active initiatives to somehow intervene, but they hope that they will fail getting no legal effect.
Life in Armenia is no longer possible to imagine without the Internet. Particularly, in such developing countries as Armenia, the Internet freedom has another important significance besides communication and data exchange.
The Internet is a free platform with wide facilities for political actors and civil society activists. The strongly polarized TV companies and the disproportionate coverage of the events unpleasant for the authorities led to a situation that nowadays the Internet is utilized as an alternative means to report information, to advance discussions or to promptly join around different issues.
Compared to other countries, in Armenia there are no or few restrictions regarding freedom of information on the Internet. According to specialists, at this moment there are no threats from the legal point of view as well, though recently there have been active initiatives to somehow intervene, but they hope that they will fail getting no legal effect.
Movses Hakobyan, lawyer of the Media Initiatives Center, considers that regulations must be imposed, when there is an extreme need for it. “In democratic and developing countries of a certain degree it is blocked, when there is need to protect the minors’ rights, when there is a danger of terrorist attacks or something like that, etc. Such kind of restrictions pass very strict procedures,” clarifies Hakobyan.
Hakobyan says the Internet is a serious lever to influence the authorities and the effect can be very different. First of all, it can be in terms of citizens’ mobilization, free dissemination of information. As a sample, the lawyer mentions consolidation of the youth against the installation of boutiques at Mashtots Park, which became possible via the Internet as well, also the “100 AMD” action against the increase of transportation costs in Yerevan.
“Not our grandfathers, but the young people, active and full of potential, sit in front of the computers,” says the lawyer and adds that any undue intervention against informational flows on the Internet will entail to dissatisfaction.
According to InternetWorldStats.com providing worldwide data on the Internet users, there were 1.800.000 people using Intenet in Armenia, which is 60.6 percent of the population as of December 31, 2011. To compare, it is worth mentioning that only 40.000 people or 0.1 percent and 191.000 people or 6.4 percent of the population used the Internet in Armenia in 2001 and 2009, respectively. The Internet was accessed by broad masses of the population in 2008-2009 as a result of demonopolization of telecommunication sphere, decreasing price policy and development of infrastructures.
According to the data of the same source, Armenia is the leading country in the South Caucasus with the regard of the Internet access. It is followed by Azerbaijan by 50 percent access and Georgia by 28.4 percent.
In Russia the Internet access is 44.3 percent. According to forecasts the Internet accessibility worldwide will run to 75-85 percent in 2020 instead of 34.3 percent as of 2012. In developed countries that indicator will run to 90 %.
However, nowadays one of the most serious and important issues in the world is the restrictions against the free flows of information on the Internet. China, the Islamic Republic of Iran and recently Russia, too, are striking examples of this. Here regarding restriction of information flows and blocking of dozens of websites creating legal basis for such “regulations” are already applied or the first steps being implemented.
Whereas, the international human rights organizations call on the countries to avoid of the legal restrictions on freedom of information flows on the Internet, unless there is extreme necessity.
As for Armenia, there are several regulations regarding the Internet which mainly concern public and personal notifications via the Internet, tariffs and conditions of data reporting and service provision to the Internet access, permissions, etc.
A part of them are indirect regulations stemming from civil-legal relations: insult and slander, copyright, etc.
According to lawyer Movses Hakobyan, in Armenia the news websites were blocked after the well known events of March 1, 2008, when state of emergency was declared in Armenia. According to unofficial data, nearly 20 websites, particularly informative ones, were blocked. Youtube was also among the blocked ones.
The lawyer says it is impossible to immediately introduce restrictions to the Internet and affect the information flows as such kind of “filtration” or blocking violates also rules, particularly concerning free circulation of goods and services, set by the World Trade Organization.
“I don’t see any chaotic situation in terms of information flows on the Internet in Armenia, as we have a small market, accordingly the problems are small, too. When we observe the big countries solving their problems on this issue, it becomes clear that we have nothing to do here,” says Hakobyan.
The lawyer brings the example of the “Delfi AS v. Estonia” lawsuit about which the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided on October 10, 2013, that the news website is liable for the offensive and slanderous comments of readers.
Nearly 90 human rights and other concerned organizations applied to ECHR to review the case, as it could be a serious blow to freedom of speech as a precedent.
“When we have the rights of a huffy and vilified citizen on one side and the rights of freedom of the mass media, the citizens’ rights to receive information and the rights of free information flows on the other side, then, to my mind, the preference should be given to the triplet pushing back the right to private life,” mentions the lawyer.
This article was prepared within the framework of the “Internet and Rights” newsletter published by “Journalists for the Future” NGO with the financial support of the OSCE Office in Yerevan. Content, views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and it is possible that they do not match with the views of the OSCE Office in Yerevan. All the materials of the newsletter “Internet and Rights” can be accessed here.
Source` JNews.am