On March 9, Wednesday, in Tekali village, which is situated on the border of Georgia, Azerbayjan and Armenia, “The Caucasian Peacekeeping Initiative Center” (Armenia), “Union of Women for Civil Rights” (Azerbaijan) and “Tekali Association” (Georgia) with the financial support of the American Fund of Democracy Support, organized hearings on theme “Medation of Georgia in Solving Armenian-Azeri Conflict: Where to Start From?.”

Politologists Georgi Khutsishvili made a report for the mediation of Georgia in that conflict, and Mamuka Areshidze made a report against. Representatives of NGOs, media, Abkhazia and South Osetia were also present on the event.

Besides many journalists from Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan took part in the discussion.

Source: www.1news.az

Read More »Armenian, Azeri and Georgian Journalists Meet in Georgia

Ten journalists of Armenian origin who were killed in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire will be added to a list of slain journalists in Turkey by the Ankara-based Contemporary Journalists Association, or ÇGD. The association will hold a ceremony April 24, the date when some countries commemorate the alleged Armenian genocide in Ottoman lands.

The newly added names include Krikor Zohrab, a lawyer, author and three-time deputy in the Ottoman Parliament; Taniel Varujan, a renowned Armenian writer; Rupen Zartaryan, Siamento (Atom Yarjanian) and six others, all also pioneers of western Armenian literature. 

The 76-name list of journalists killed in Turkey before and after the foundation of the Turkish Republic includes well-known figures such as Abdi İpekçi, Çetin Emeç and Uğur Mumcu, but previously contained only one Armenian name: Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian descent who was assassinated in Istanbul in 2007.

When asked whether the ÇGD is worried about the potential response to adding the Armenian journalists to the list, Abakay said: “I wish we had the information before and has taken this radical step before. We, the Turkish people, unfortunately do not know anything but what the official history has told us. The truth was hidden from us.”

Read More »Ottoman-era Armenians Added To List Of Slain Turkish Journalists

Blogger, journalist, and human rights activist Zhila Baniyaghoob was arrested along with her husband, Bahman Amouyi, in the postelection crackdown. She was released on bail; her husband remains in prison.

Baniyaghoob wrote the following post to mark the anniversary of their arrest:

A year ago, on a night like, this they rang the bell of our neighbors and said: “We are the relatives of the unit next to you. Their bell is out of order. Please open the door for us.” Our neighbor opened the door for them without knowing that they’d come to arrest us. It’s always like this! They always arrest people in similar fashion.

When I was released from prison, our neighbor was too ashamed to say hello for a long time because she had opened the door to those who took Bahman and I to prison. Why was she ashamed?! I told her those who lied to you and fooled you should be ashamed.

It was on a night like this when Bahman, who had been beaten up by batons and was exhausted, had come home before me and gone to bed. When I came home, he told me, “Zhila, bring me a cup of hot tea and please also give me the hot-water bottle so that I put it on my bruises.”

Read More »Iran: The Difference Between Jailed Journalists and Their Interrogator

Seven journalists have been arrested by police investigating an alleged plot to overthrow the Turkish government.

They were among 10 people detained as part of an official inquiry into Ergenekon, an ultra-nationalist clandestine group accused of trying to launch a coup against the government headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Among those under arrest is Nedim Sener, named last year as an International Press Institute (IP) world press freedom hero. He works for the daily newspaper Milliyet. 

IPI director Alison Bethel McKenzie said: “No journalist should face arrest, charges, imprisonment or any other form of harassment or intimidation for doing their job… We urge the authorities to release all of the journalists imprisoned because of their work.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk

Read More »Seven Journalists Arrested In Turkey

The president of “Asparez” journalists’ club in Gyumri Levon Barseghyan intends to publish a new daily in two months. According to him, compared with the capital which has a great number of print dailies, the regions are deprived of this kind of medium for more than 20 years. And he considers necessary to restore the tradition of newspaper reading in the mornings.

“For many times I have applied to different donors, explained, asked and convinced them to provide support for printing, to fund the establishment of printing-houses. Today we hope that there will be funding, and finally we’ll have our printing-house in our city,” explains Levon Barseghyan.

Barseghyan expects the support of both local and foreign donors. He says that if there is no support they will try to print the newspaper by their own efforts. According to Barseghyan, financial support has already been promised, but since there is no contract yet he does not wish to name the supporter.

By the calculations of “Asparez” club, an investment of $80,000 is necessary for the project. This sum does not include the editorial current expenditures which will be about $4,000 per month, according to Barseghyan.

Read More »Restoring the Tradition: Gyumri-based “Asparez” Want to Publish a Daily

The Internet which seems to be absolutely free and without borders might appear under restraint at any moment, if such a desire is expressed by the structures which have an impact on organizations managing this sector.

“Actually, freedom of communication means is not absolute: authorities instruct, ‘turn it off’, and the providers do it”, says Grigor Saghyan, the vice-chairman of the “Internet Society” NGO and the technical director of the ‘Arminco’ company.

According to him, providers, obtaining relevant license, accept the rules of the game. In the license, he says, “it is clearly reported in what cases one should do what s/he is told by the state, otherwise s/he can lose the right of functioning. Moreover, there are no clear statements, “Since nobody knows how much and further the Internet will develop”, says Grigor Saghyan.

For the first time, in Armenia, mass blocking of freedom of disseminating and getting information through the Internet took place after the March events followed by the RA presidential elections in 2008, when the then incumbent president Robert Kocharyan declared a 20-day state of emergency in the country.

Read More »Free “Restricted” Zone: Repetition of March Restrictions on the Internet Not Excluded in Armenia

January 29 will not be marked in black on Armenian cyber calendar, but what happened this year on that day will be remembered for a long time by the experts as a day of mass attack of hackers on Armenian sites.

That day hackers damaged about 300 websites registered on the Armenian domain which were served by the Armenian ‘Smart Systems’ company. According to the company survey, first their server had been damaged and then the sites using the company hosting broken.

Then different state bodies hurried to report that there was no any governmental site among those on the list and added that the state web-sites are out of danger for they are fully protected. And the damaged sites belonged mainly to individuals or private companies.

The experts, directly related to the issue, reported that the attackers as well as the sinners were outsiders.

The head manager of the ‘Smart Systems’ company Gor Isaverdyan says that the American company dealing with the server security had told them that they had accidentally deleted the security codes of the server of ‘Smart Systems’. Isaverdyan told JNews that the cyber attack resulted in breaking the contract with the American company and trusting the server security to another, Canadian this time, company.

Read More »Cyber Attack: Information Security of Armenia On the Internet

The Armenian content on the Internet was significantly increased during the last year, and quite a lot of work done in that regard.

The chairman of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises Karen Vardanyan says that there was almost nothing in the Armenian language in Internet one year ago. And today, there are many different Armenian sites and blogs on deferent themes. 

“In Armenia, the number of computer owners and Internet users increases daily. So, as a result, the market and the demand of Armenian content increase too. Actually, the increase of the Armenian content is conditioned by the increase of Internet users and Armenian auditorium,” says Vardanyan.

Experts emphasize that this increase is mostly implemented only by the initiative of individuals and enthusiasts. And such an approach cannot make basic changes in the field.

For instance, in the Armenian version of the Wikipedia free encyclopedia the number of Armenian articles increases and there are more than 13,000 articles in there, but the number of volunteers submitting them decreases.

According to one of the administrators of the Armenian Wikipedia Aleksey Chalabyan, this decrease of the volunteers cannot help affecting the increase of articles.

Read More »Followers of Mashtots on the Internet: Armenian e-Content Increasing Thanks To Enthusiasts

Freedom of information dissemination on the internet has become a topic of discussion throughout the world, including Armenia, especially after social networks started to be used for raising protest waves.

Head of political developments research center, political scientist Vahan Dilanyan considers the Internet and the social networks to be “necessary, but not sufficient” tools to result in the Egyptian «domino effect» in Armenia.

The speciaist has formed such an opinion after drawing parallels between the Facebook users’ number in Armenia and in Egypt. It turned out that Armenian figures (4,5 percent) do  not so much differ from the Egyptian indices (6,8 percent). In both countries the majority of Facebook users are young people – between 18 and 33-year-old.

“These facts can become a challenge towards Armenian authorities for the history and the present situation show that exactly the youth becomes the gear of changes,” says the political scientist.

“It’s not the same situation in Armenia. We have no problem of blocking or unblocking the internet. If something is blocked, the negative energy gathers and explodes. I’m not a supporter of blocking, I support the proper use of Internet,” says Eduard Sharmazanov, a deputy for the ruling Republican party.

Read More »From Virtual to Real: Social Networks Impact on Inter-political Climate of Armenia

Still in 2009 penetration of the Internet in Armenia was estimated less than 15 percent, but today, according to various estimates, this figure approaches 80 percent.

According to recent reports of the Commission on Regulation of Public Services of Armenia in October 2010, the Internet is accessed by nearly half of the citizens of Armenia (47, 1 percent). At the same time, some Armenian experts consider these data to be overestimated.

Obviously, this figure has been reached due to the increase of Internet users via mobile phones. According to the commission, only 160,000 people in Armenia use broadband access – high speed Internet connection. Igor Mkrtumyan, president of the ‘Internet Community’ NGO, considers that an independent survey should be conducted to reveal the number of Internet users in Armenia.

In turn, chairman of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises Karen Vardanyan noted that there is no a common approved calculation method of internet users. “If considering users through smart and mobile phones, then the statistics of 1, 5 million users – is true. However, we must take into consideration the actual users of the Internet through DSL, optical communication channels,” says Karen Vardanyan. 

Read More »e-Users’ Map: Cable Internet Used By More Than One Third of Armenia’s Population