At a press conference held today Ashot Melikyan, who heads the "Freedom of Speech Defense Committee" and Mesrop Harutyunyan, a specialist in the field, declared that "no one will be handing us the right to freedom of speech on a silver platter" and urged Armenians to constantly fight in defense of that right. Mr. Melikyan compared violations against journalists during the first three months of 2010 with the same period in 2009 and said that there had been more violations registered this year due to the January 10 parliamentary elections in District 10. These and other findings are part of their three month report.

"When the political field heats up there’s a concomitant rise in violations against reporters in the course of their work," he noted, adding that there have been three cases of physical violence against reporters this year and six cases of restrictions in the dissemination of information. Mr. Harutyunyan pointed to the February 4 draft bill by the State Committee for TV and Radio as an indication of where developments are heading. He said that the ‘standards’ crafted by the Committee in terms of decency, violence and the rearing of young people, have been in effect as of March 12. Mr. Harutyunyan argued that the document was incomplete, lacking definition and prone to subjective application. The expert also criticized the legislative package that decriminalized slander and defamation charges. "It remains a mystery to me but the law, as adopted after the first hearing, includes many hidden dangers and obstacles. For example, based on some unknown logic, fines levied against an individual expressing insults and a news outlet circulating them are four-fold different. If I call Poghos an ‘ass’, and a paper picks it up, I will be fined 250,000 AMD and the paper will be hit with a one million AMD fine. This is dangerous."