Epress.am News from Armenia
Vardges Ovyan, the editor of the independent paper Nor Ech (“New Page”) published in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, has said that he will be joining the already more than two dozen Armenian editors who issued a statement in defense of Haykakan Jamanak (“Armenian Times”) daily chief editor, imprisoned journalist Nikol Pashinyan.
This news was conveyed to the editors of Haykakan Jamanak through an email sent to them from Stepanakert.
“I am joining the statement by directors of media agencies in Armenia about the unlawfulness carried out against Nikol Pashinyan and I demand that the Haykakan Jamanak editor and all those who are kept in RA prisons because of their political beliefs be released. A state that respects itself should not have political prisoners. It is deeply disappointing that Armenia’s authorities in the issue of suppressing dissent and people’s political beliefs don’t differentiate from their colleagues in Aliyev’s Azerbaijan,” said Ovyan in his letter.
Note that on Jan. 19, 2010, the Court of General Jurisdiction in Armenia found Nikol Pashinyan guilty in organizing “mass disturbances” on Mar. 1, 2008, following the presidential elections in Yerevan, and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment.
On Mar. 9, 2010, the Criminal Court of Appeal, by granting Pashinyan amnesty, cut his prison term by half. Both the defense and the prosecutor appealed this decision at the RA Court of Cassation, which revoked the appeals on May 5, 2010.
Both Pashinian and the opposition bloc the Armenian National Congress (HAK) consider the case politically motivated.