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Media Advocate initiative issued a statement on Sunday, addressing a lawsuit filed against Aravot daily, as well as voicing some concerns over the matter. The full text of the statement is below.

"According to Aravot daily, this year, in their February 18 issue, they referred to an article partially published on Aravot.am website under the headline “Daily Press Review”. As it is mentioned in Aravot daily, the press review ended with the following link: “You can read the whole article in today’s issue of Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper.”

The above-mentioned publication referred to the article titled “The conflict between Alik Sargsyan and Vardges Hovakimyan has a long history”, which was published in Haykakan Zhamanak daily in 2018, in its July 6 issue.

As it turned out later, on the basis of that article, a lawsuit was filed for refutation; nevertheless, a refutation request was submitted not to the initial source Haykakan Zhamanak daily but to Aravot.am and the execution of the verdict was assigned to the Judicial Acts Compulsory Enforcement Service.

The article titled as “Aravot is not going “to be held accountable” instead of someone” referred to this incident: “Aravot has never been involved in this lawsuit, moreover, certain issues related to our professional and business reputation were touched upon before the verdict was made in court.”

It is also interesting that no other media outlet that published the same article was involved in the process, not even as a third side.

Media Advocate initiative urges the judge making the verdict to clarify the reason why media outlets were not involved in the case investigation and why Aravot daily’s reference according to which Haykakan Zhamanak daily is the source of the article, was not considered.

Media Advocate initiative urges to stop such cases of pressure against freedom of speech, not to label the media outlets, as well as not to be guided by the principle of selective decision-making in courts and not to target this or that media."