I must confess that the fight against fake pages does not matter to me. At the very least, that is not the most important issue facing our country. I will bring the comments under Aravot Daily’s posts as an example. The majority of people who comment under my daily editorials are either extreme government supporters (they tend to present themselves as Nimar, Armen, and others) or extreme opposition supporters (for example, Giordano Galilyan, Garo). I am grateful to everyone for paying attention to what I write, and, by the way, I understand that people with moderate views cannot be very active online, and especially not on Facebook. To be honest, I don’t care about whether or not they are fakes, members of a particular party, or simply individual citizens. I don’t care about whether the person behind that fake name is Poghos Petrosyan or Petros Poghosyan. I also do not care about their reasons for hiding their real names. They are readers, and they are presenting their opinions.
Both ruling party and opposition politicians have turned the issue of fake pages into the main issue facing Armenia. This is somewhat understandable; people do not want to listen to or read anything negative about themselves. That obsession has lasted about 5-6 years, but using the fight against fakes as a tool to fight against the oppositions only happened during Pashinyan’s administration and, most likely, under his orders.
There is no reason why a former deputy and the chief of parliamentary staff must present their views through fake pages, which, as we have seen, continue their “fake” activities even after they are arrested. The statement made by the National Security Service regarding the discovery of a “criminal group” writing negative things about the Prime Minister and My Step has no legal basis, in my opinion, and it is simply a political accusation. By the way, if writing ‘grazers,’ ‘idiot who has been clapping for 2.5 years,’ ‘homeless,’ ‘people who consider themselves donkeys or animals,’ ‘people whose empty brains are filled with Dukhov (with spirit)’ and other ugly and immodest statements was a crime that encouraged hatred against a particular group, then writing ‘immoral outcasts’ and ‘people whining under walls’ is also a crime. I doubt that any lawyer would sign the NSS’s statement; who wants to humiliate themselves?
One of the main goals of the 2018 revolution was to establish a country of law, but that did not become a reality. They are creating criminal cases against the opposition in the same way that took place before the revolution.
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Aram Abrahamyan
