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The year 2017 was am intense and unfavorable year for operation of Armenian media and reporters amid the Parliamentary, Yerevan Council and municipality elections held in the country in 2017, the Chairman of the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression (CPFE) Ashot Melikyan stated on Thursday, presenting the data of a new report named “Advancement of freedom of speech and Issues of Media Protection Media in Armenia.”

In Melikyan’s words, election periods are generally characterized with tense inter-political struggle often accompanied with violence against press representatives and various pressures. 
In the period of the parliamentary election campaign, CPFE monitoring reveled 3 cases of physical attack on reporters and 6 cases of impediments of their professional duties. On the election day on April, 2 cases of physical attack, 8 cases of impediments were registered. During the Elections to Yerevan Council of Elders held in May 14, 2 cases of physical violence and 5 cases of various obstructions were recorded. 
The report reminds that at the initiative of CPFE number of media organizations came up with statements, condemning the violence against media representatives covering the elections as well as calling for the assailants to be held accountable. 

CPFE states that the number of charges brought in the scope of criminal cases related to the events on Baghramyan Avenue (#ElectricYerevan, June 23, 2015) and in Khorenatsi Street and Sari Tagh of Yerevan (second half of July 2016) during which large-scale violence was used against the journalists and the cameramen, indicate the measures taken by the law enforcement bodies are not adequate to the scale of violence against the mass media representatives.

It next reminds that 29 cases of violence and obstruction against journalists were recorded during the parliamentary and municipality elections, while only 7 criminal cases were opened out of which five were dismissed “for lack of evidence.”

Summing up the past year, the report suggests 11 cases of violence on media representatives, 113 cases of various types of pressure on media outlets and reporters as well as 62 cases of violating the right of receiving and disseminating information have been recorded in the past year.