On February 1, Russian “Roskomnadzor” (official name, Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) officially notified (see its departmental website) that a law came into force, according to which, this service can block any website for “committing riots, and extremist activities and calls to participating in mass public events”. The decision on blocking is made by the Attorney General, his deputies based on website monitoring, as well as (attention) to the “government agencies, organizations and citizens’ notifications.”
Upon receiving the prosecutor’s decision, “Roskomnadzor” is promptly instructing its operators to block given information resource. Moreover, according to “BBC Russian Service, the law has already been tested: 4 websites are blocked, including, Live Journal. Innovative censors have explained it as follows, “Blocked resources were disseminating harmful information to the public and were posing threat to the society and the individual”. That’s it. Without trial and judgment. Someone has decided that the information is a threat… The “ax” thinking of Russian elite comes from the ancient times and has reached perfection during Stalinism: “no man, no problem”. Block, shut down, deny… And now, everything fell into its place in Putin’s Russia: “no website, no headache.” The Soviet censors, “material” writers and their generations missed their work. And now, what times are coming: you can send a notice to the Attorney General saying that such-and-such website is “the people’s enemy” and that’s it. The prosecutor’s office will make a decision to block it. Surely, they would not let any website, suddenly, for example, considers a governor’s driver’s brother-in-law’s business a criminal. It is a threat to the individual. Block it. Promptly. Without trial and judgment. Thus, the prosecutor general and his deputies can consider everything a “call for riots,” “extremism” or “threat”. Let’s say a website is disseminating an information on the place, time, and speakers of the meeting. What? A notice? It is a “call to participate in massive event”, a direct call. What to do? Immediately block the site. “But, let’s not care about Russia, why are you so concerned about?” you may ask. I will answer; we say, “let’s not care”. Ask the authorities of Armenia. There are (and before this law comes into force, they were) officials who are ready to pass a similar law by the very first instruction. Especially, when our National Security Service already has the experience to block. After Kocharyan’s edict to introduce an emergency situation after 1 March 2008, the NSC established an illegal censorship, and blocked the websites, and banned the print media to publish internal political material, due to which the newspapers were not issued for 20 days. The problem reached the point that Kocharyan’s vigilant detectives banned the edition of “Fourth power” newspaper, which was not containing any internal political materials. The newspaper was publishing articles on famous dictators known in the history… Like, modern Russian censors can come to their Armenian counterparts for training courses to intensify their “flare”… And to be more serious, I have a fear. Because the Armenian ruling elite is accustomed to ape Russia in everything, as it has already agreed to participate in restoration of a new Soviet under the name “Eurasian Union”, therefore, sooner or later, it will also express desire to restore the Soviet Union “brilliant traditions,” including the censorship of websites. Vladimir Putin is a usual dictator, or to put it this way, “a fine-tuned” dictator. And the dictators like him are terrified of free man and free expression. And this is my concern. Armenian authorities are also terrified of free expression, and to maintain their own power, after selling Armenia’s independence to Russian “Gazprom”, will try to take the next Putin step. Especially when the so-called alleged experts of information security are sitting in Baghramyan 26, who doom the screenings of hospitality during the opening of the church in Abovyan, or the information about Serzh Sargsyan’s Korean “therapeutic tourism” an intimidation to the government. These people just need a sparkle to block all free sites. The Putin and Armenian “ax” censors missed to consider only one thing: such blocking in the era of information technologies is absolutely an ineffective way. However, this is another topic, which required to be addressed by a more extensive analysis.
Mesrop HARUTYUNYAN
P.S. – I rushed to publish this article until Serzh Sargsyan’s vigilant censors have not established a “komnadzor” in Armenia, which, surely, would see extremism in my article and would block “Aravot” and its website…
