Hetq Chief Editor Edik Baghdasaryan and a select group of the news site’s reporters are in Rio de Janeiro to take part in the eighth Global Investigative Journalism Conference. The team has filed the following report:

“Democracy can be measured in any country by the people’s ability of free expression.”

This was the core message delivered by Catalina Botero, a Columbia attorney elected as Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression in 2008 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Botero noted that investigative journalists must serve as torchbearers of freedom of expression.

“Half of humanity does not live in democratic systems while the other half fights to defend the right of free expression. Free speech is the thermometer by which so-called democracies are measured and investigative journalism is the mercury.”

The Investigative Journalists NGO of Armenia, which publishes Hetq Online, is a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (with 90 member organizations in 40 countries) that is a main sponsor of the conference.

The conference has assembled 1,300 reporters from 87 countries. Over the course of 100panels, workshops and sessions, many of the world’s top investigative reporters, editors, and producers, as well as key resource people on freedom of information, media law, and security will address the conference on a wide variety of issues.