“When I once spoke about corrupt judges, I did not mean that all judges are corrupt. When I said last time that even a terrorist can infiltrate under the guise of a journalist, it does not mean that I say that there are terrorists among journalists. I do not see a single terrorist among journalists today, but at the same time, I spoke about security issues,” Minister of Justice Karen Andreasyan told reporters after the government session on Thursday, answering the question about his opinion of the incident in the National Assembly on Wednesday when journalists were taken out of the booth and were not allowed to film the intervention of the security officers who entered the National Assembly hall during the dispute between the deputies.
According to Andreasyan, “I am asked why the movement of journalists can be restricted since journalists have such a profession where it is obvious that there is no danger from them. I have tried to explain that in the event of a security threat or similar information, the movement of anyone, from a minister to a journalist or a doctor to a cleaner can be restricted. Today, as a minister, I enter specially protected areas with such inspections that no minister has gone through, and these are the security rules that we respect. Our movement is also somewhat restricted.”
As for the incident in the National Assembly, the minister spoke about the Human Rights Defender’s note and said, “One of the human rights activists refers to the case of Mandley v. Hungary, and stated yesterday that this case should not hinder the movement of journalists in the National Assembly, where the most intense and important information is circulated. I claim that in the same case, our human rights activist forgot to quote paragraphs 67 and 68, which also say, for the sake of a legitimate purpose, such as the normal work of the parliament or the rights of the deputies in this case, I also say in those cases that national security and other people’s security can not be restrictions or silencing freedom of speech, but creating reasonable work conducive to certain agreements and certain rules for journalists. There was a lot of discussion when security officers came in. In general, we all want any official state work to be covered live, but you know that there is a rule that the faces of security officers should not be photographed. In this logic we may find other solutions, such as how to cover the faces of security officers. There may be an agreement, for example, that all of our journalists, if they were to follow the rules of ethics and rules that we expect from the majority, and there would be a situation, they could not turn off the recording, but we had to be sure that their faces would be covered, as they do with children.”
Nelly Babayan
