Since 1994, May 3 has been celebrated as the World Press Freedom Day. Relatively perceived as a professional holiday of journalists, this date is actually not so much an occasion for congratulations as it is an occasion to remember the fundamental problems in the field of freedom of press and speech in our country.
Today, journalists are perhaps the most vulnerable representatives of professional solidarity, because the field of press is directly under the target of the current authorities, as a consequence, also of the state system. In the circumstances of formal, showcase democracy and real, substantive authoritarianism established in Armenia, the press is the only institution that exposes and, with that disclosure, fights against the gross violations of democracy in the country, the ongoing processes of strengthening sole power. With this mission, the press and journalists have become class enemies for the government, because they prevent the degeneration of the government with their professional activities.
This is evidenced by the various defamatory, slanderous, false information-containing and obvious targeting statements made by various representatives of the government, state administration bodies against the non-governmental press, the absurd lawsuits filed against them with huge and illogical sums of compensation demands, the mass media without and other legislative initiatives aimed at limiting financial resources, fake attacks, organized campaigns on social networks, total lack of culture of basic relations with journalists.
All these attempts of the government are in fact directed not only, and sometimes not so much, against the press, but against the activities of journalists restraining the anti-democratic behavior of the government.
Therefore, the freedom of the press in a broad sense, the protection of the freedom of the press is actually the protection of democracy as well, human rights and fundamental freedom in Armenia, without which the degradation of democratic values can cross the point of irreversibility.
The Union of Journalists of Armenia congratulates journalists, all workers of mass media on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day, wishing them will, endurance, determination and perseverance to overcome the difficulties of the current difficult period and to fulfill their professional and civil mission.
Union of Journalists of Armenia
