Wednesday, January 25 2017 12:03

ArmInfo. At a session on Tuesday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) rejected the Armenian Delegation's proposal to revise Paragraph 9 of  the Resolution "Attacks against journalists and media freedom in  Europe" based on the report by Volodymyr Ariev (Ukraine, EPP/CD). 

The paragraph says that PACE expresses its concern over the fact that  the media freedom stipulated by Article 10 of the European Convention  of Human Rights is missing in the territories of the member states,  which are "de facto controlled by the separatist regime".  Particularly, the matter concerns "Nagorno- Karabakh - in Azerbaijan,  Abkhazia and South Ossetia - in Georgia, Transnistria - in Moldova".        

The Armenian Delegation suggested replacing the names of the  territories with a phrasing "conflict zones", Samvel Farmanyan,  representative of the Armenian Delegation to PACE, MP from the ruling  Republican Party of Armenia, says on his Facebook page. "The  reference to Karabakh in this report is quite manipulative," he says,  adding that in his report on media freedom, Mr. Ariev notes that  "Karabakh is a part of Azerbaijan".  

"A simple question comes up. Why is there this reference there? The  reference is there simply because the Azeri government needs that. Do  you think the Azeri government needs this because they care about  media freedom? Never. They care more about media freedom in  Nagorno-Karabakh, but not in Azerbaijan. All of us know well what's  going on in Azerbaijan. It's a really ridiculous picture," Farmanyan  said in his speech at PACE. 

"And another question comes up. Why has Honorable Mr. Ariev put this  reference? Unfortunately, it is not because Mr. Ariev has paid a  visit to Nagorno-Karabakh and has not done a fact-finding mission.  Even he has not used the Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders  records, where Nagorno-Karabakh has better positions than Azerbaijan  itself," he said, adding that it's because Mr. Ariev's grandma is  Azerbaijani. "This is his wording", Farmanyan said, pointing at Mr.  Ariev's interview to Azerbaijani press. 

In his speech, Farmanyan also stressed the need "to send a clear  message to President Aliyev that he should find markets for trading  instead of Strasbourg".