{"id":281991,"date":"2017-09-06T17:10:24","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T13:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am\/?p=281991"},"modified":"2017-09-06T17:22:24","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T13:22:24","slug":"head-of-na-standing-committee-on-human-rights-bans-reporters-from-taking-part-in-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/09\/06\/head-of-na-standing-committee-on-human-rights-bans-reporters-from-taking-part-in-meetings.html","title":{"rendered":"Head of NA Standing Committee on Human Rights Bans Reporters from Taking Part in Meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the Wednesday meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs and Protection of Human Rights, committee chairman Hrayr Tovmasyan announced that he has decided to ban reporters and camerapeople from attending the committee hearings, Aravot.am reports, stressing that after Tovmasyan\u2019s words, the reporters left the room in protest.<\/p>\n<p>The committee today was discussing several bills which are to be included on the agenda of the second session of Armenia\u2019s new parliament, including amendments to the country\u2019s criminal and administrative violations codes and the laws on police and psychiatric help. The majority of these bills have been introduced by the Armenian government.<\/p>\n<p>Tovmasyan\u2019s decision would have previously been illegal; however, according to the newly adopted rules of procedure of the National Assembly, committee heads now have the right to prohibit reporters from taking part in the meetings.<\/p>\n<p>Article 14.7 of the rulebook states: \u201cReporters accredited in the National Assembly can only take part in the hearings of the committee with the permission of the committee head, and can carry out their professional activities only in a specially designated area.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Note, only two lawmakers had voted against the amendment limiting reporters\u2019 rights &#8211; opposition Armenian National Congress MPs Levon Zurabyan and Nikol Pashinyan.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The committee today was discussing several bills which are to be included on the agenda of the second session of Armenia\u2019s new parliament, including amendments to the country\u2019s&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[66041],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}