{"id":2076,"date":"2016-08-01T04:29:42","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T04:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2076"},"modified":"2016-08-17T04:33:37","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T04:33:37","slug":"armenian-president-apologizes-to-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2076","title":{"rendered":"Armenian President Apologizes To Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

RFE\/RL Armenian Service<\/strong>
\n

\"Armenia<\/a>
Armenia – An Armenian TV cameraman recovers in a Yerevan hospital from wounds sustained during a violent dispersal of an opposition demonstration, 30 July 2016.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nPresident Serzh Sarkisian publicly apologized on Monday to more than a dozen Armenian journalists who were beaten up during the violent dispersal by riot police of an opposition rally held in Yerevan last week.<\/p>\n

The protest took place on Friday in the city\u2019s Sari Tagh neighborhood overlooking a police compound that was seized by opposition gunmen on July 17.<\/p>\n

At least 14 reporters and cameramen, including three RFE\/RL journalists, were assaulted and injured by a large group of plainclothes men as the police clashed with the protesters. Some of them required hospitalization.<\/p>\n

The attackers are thought to be law-enforcement officers or agents. The violence has been strongly condemned by Armenian civic groups, human rights activists and Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE\u2019s Vienna-based representative on freedom of the media.<\/p>\n

Mijatovic wrote Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on Monday, urging the Armenian authorities to \u201cguarantee that the press is not targeted by the police or thugs.\u201d \u201cThe police should be protecting journalists and members of the media,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sarkisian also deplored the violence as he delivered a speech on the authorities\u2019 two-week standoff with the gunmen, which ended on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI apologize to our journalists for the incidents of July 29-30,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was our biggest failing during those days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll necessary conclusions will certainly be drawn [by the authorities,]\u201d added the president. \u201cWhile soliciting your forgiveness, I want to ask journalists, but not law-enforcers, to forget about those incidents because I am really sure that they will not be repeated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armenia\u2019s Office of the Prosecutor-General was quick to open a criminal case in connection with the attacks on the journalists, while the police pledged to launch an \u201cinternal inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a joint statement, Armenia\u2019s leading press freedom associations dismissed those moves, saying no law-enforcement official has been prosecuted in the past for assaulting reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe find it meaningless to demand anything from the police and reserve ourselves the right to resort to other legal means of protecting journalists\u2019 interests,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RFE\/RL Armenian Service President Serzh Sarkisian publicly apologized on Monday to more than a dozen Armenian journalists who were beaten up during the violent dispersal [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-armenia-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2079,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions\/2079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}