VIDEO. "Disgraceful sanctions are hanging over the media," Naira Zohrabyan

“It was shocking for me to see the report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Armenia. I have not seen such an unprecedentedly cynical report... When Armenia joined the Council of Europe, one of our main commitments was to decriminalize defamation and insults. And now the government has brought forward a bill that has been adopted; disgraceful sanctions are hanging over the freedom of speech of the media, and I thought there would be at least minimal concern about this,” said former MP Naira Zohrabyan in a conversation with journalists at the Union of Journalists of Armenia’s congress.

“Does the Council of Europe trample on its own principles like this, when one of its sacred cows was the abolition of the death penalty and the decriminalization of insults and defamation?” she added.

It is recalled that on January 27, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted the resolution on ‘The functioning of democratic institutions in Armenia’ by a large majority.