ArmInfo. Armenia has Armenia worsened its position in the "Internet Freedom" rating by Freedom Houseworsened its position in the Internet Freedom rating by Freedom House.
Thus, in the newly published Freedom House report "Freedom of the Internet" Armenia is ranked among the countries with free Internet.
At the same time, according to the publication, Armenia this year dropped by 4 lines in the field of Internet freedom compared to last year's indicators, gaining 71 points out of a possible 100. "Internet freedom in Armenia has been significantly limited as a result of measures taken by the government to manage information flows during the armed conflict between ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno- Karabakh," the authors of the report note.
Human rights activists state that the imposition of martial law at the end of September 2020 imposed wide restrictions on the ability of the media to cover the hostilities, including by prohibiting statements that pose a threat to national security, allowing authorities to demand the removal of content, and imposing fines for non-compliance. "A number of Turkish and Azerbaijani sites with.az and .tr domains have been unavailable for several weeks. Users have also reported problems accessing TikTok. Notable news sites have also been subject to technical attacks, including distributed denial of service attacks ( DDoS), as a result of which many of them were temporarily unavailable during the conflict, "the report says.
The report considers positively the fact that the Armenian government stopped collecting metadata, including location data and telephone recordings, from telecommunications introduced for the purpose of contact tracing, which was introduced at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
The government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has pledged to tackle systemic corruption, electoral gaps and insufficient application of the law in various areas. "Despite the government's reformist stance, concerns remain about political interference in the judiciary and hostile rhetoric against the media by government officials," the report reads.
Note that neighboring Georgia is also among the states with a free Internet with a score of 77 points, Azerbaijan - 35 points and among non-free states, Iran - 16 points, Turkey - 34 points. Note that the states which scored from 1 point to 39 points are assigned to countries with a non-free Internet, from 40 points to 69 points partially free, and from 70 to 100 free.