Epress.am News from Armenia
The number of articles on human rights issues in Armenian online news media significantly increased in the November 2013 to January 2014 quarter as compared to the previous quarter [AM], according to findings by social studies research center Socioscope for eTV (a joint project between Epress.am and the Helsinki Association for Human Rights).
In this past quarter, 9 Armenian news websites (Epress.am, Tert.am, Lragir.am, News.am, Azatutyun.am, Hetq.am, GalaTV.am, Aravot.am, and iLur.am) published 1,756 articles related to human rights — in other words, 752 articles more than the previous quarter.
The number of articles per online news media is as follows:
| N | % | |
| Aravot.am | 264 | 15.03 |
| News.am | 261 | 14.86 |
| GalaTV.am | 255 | 14.52 |
| Tert.am | 220 | 12.53 |
| Epress.am | 209 | 11.90 |
| iLur.am | 181 | 10.31 |
| Lragir.am | 170 | 9.68 |
| Azatutyun.am | 112 | 6.38 |
| Hetq.am | 84 | 4.78 |
| Overall | 1756 | 100.00 |
The increase in articles on human rights issues is perhaps due to the fact that during this quarter on several occasions, the right to peaceful assembly was violated and a great many demonstrators were detained or arrested by police. For instance, on Dec. 2, 2013, during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Armenia, more than 100 peaceful demonstrators were detained.
There were also a large number of articles on the ban on family visits, hunger strike, and other violations of the rights of Shant Harutyunyan and his friends, arrested on Nov. 5, 2013, and the protest rallies calling for the release of Karabakh War veteran Volodya Avetisyan.
Almost a third of the articles on human rights issues blamed the Armenian police (578 articles, or 33.76% of the total). Compared to the previous quarter, there were fewer news pieces that blamed no one for the human rights violation reported in the article (15.25%). The state was named as the guilty party in articles on the controversial new pension reforms.
Who is identified as the violator of human rights?
| N | % | |
| Police | 578 | 32.92 |
| No one | 266 | 15.15 |
| Judges, the courts | 255 | 14.52 |
| Armenian authorities, official Yerevan | 122 | 6.95 |
| Prime minister, government, ministers (not of defense) | 95 | 5.41 |
| Citizens of Armenia | 75 | 4.27 |
| Republican Party of Armenia | 41 | 2.33 |
| Representatives of businesses in Armenia | 70 | 3.99 |
| RA Ministry of Justice, Prison Administration (penitentiaries) | 65 | 3.70 |
| RA Ministry of Defense, army officers, military prosecutor | 31 | 1.77 |
| Officials, oligarch-officials | 18 | 1.03 |
| Other | 140 | 7.97 |
| Overall | 1756 | 100.00 |
Unchanged, however, was the articles' geographic focus: a majority of articles on human rights violations were about incidents in the capital (74.4%), thereby overlooking human rights violations in other parts of the country.The19 news articles on the violation of the rights of members of the media seen in the previous quarter grew to 88 news articles in this quarter. This is due to the fact that all the online media outlets included in this study covered the incident in December whereby unidentified young men (later known to be affiliated with the ruling Republican Party of Armenia and its most prominent members) blocked journalists' entry into Yerevan Mayor Taron Margaryan's supposedly public defense of his doctoral thesis at the Armenian State University of Economics.
The entire report can be viewed here (in Armenian only).
Update on Mar. 3, 2013, at 8:23 pm (UTC +04:00): "Republican Party of Armenia" and the number of times it appeared in the overall number of articles was missing from the second table. We apologize for the oversight.