At the “Loft” self-development and entertainment center, “Consensus” youth NGO kicked off series of training courses. The first lecture was on April 6 on “Information War” lecture that was delivered by the information security expert, Samvel Martirosyan. During the meeting, Samvel Martirosyan said that the cyber crime silences the problem, in other words, is silencing the enemy’s sources, which Azerbaijan is now fulfilling, “As of today, Azerbaijan implicitly uses its media. Here, there is a major difference between our media because our media is very diverse. There, Ilham Aliyev made the media controllable during the last three years, in other words, killing the journalists of a few of them, some of them fled, other are imprisoned, and interestingly, they were freed a few days ago.”
He noted that on April 2, in the morning, there were no reports in the Azerbaijani press as there was no command from “above” and the reporters did not dare to cite to the Armenian or at least the world press. In an interview with Aravot.am, Samvel Martirosyan said that Azerbaijan actually defeated the information support of its action on April 2, “Simply, they had planned to run in one way but the reality was the other way, in fact, they were generally silent. As a consequence, the Azerbaijani media fell behind but the Armenian media went forward. We have a problem of understanding when Artsakh should speak and when Armenia should speak, in many cases it affects negatively, in other words, we are trying to push Artsakh forward for Armenia not to be a part of the conflict but Artsakh, for Armenia to be a supporting party but not directly a conflict. Also, it would lead directly to the recognition of Artsakh. But this works against us because the international media is trying to get an opinion from Yerevan, nothing is heard from Yerevan, and in many cases, Azerbaijan opinion runs ahead.” He stressed that at this moment, Azerbaijan is celebrating a victory, “They still have not oriented which is their victory but they have a problem now to celebrate something because otherwise it is not clear why they had so many casualties. So, soon, we will see that Azerbaijani propaganda will be completely directed inward, in other words, they will make efforts to generate joy, mirth and a feeling of victory. It has already started especially given that in parallel, a very strong pressure has fallen from these international offshore revelations pertaining to Aliyev’s family and it is already everywhere, for example, it is possible to watch the American CNN interview, whatever Azerbaijanis are talking about, in the end, they come to offshore. Hence, now, they have the problem to close up, go inside and create some illusion things inside.”
This coverage in the international media, according to Samvel Martirosyan, is more or less objective, “We have a problem that what we say is not so easily going out because we have two heads, certainly, Azerbaijan is using money in some places to advance its materials but in reality, it does not work. It is another question there was no clearance with these operations of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is not always introduced as an obvious aggressor.”
Ami CHICHAKYAN
