Perhaps it’s natural that the indignation in Armenia regarding Vahan Martirosyan, an Armenian man who asked for political asylum in Azerbaijan, is so vehement that other scapegoats just had to be sought.

How public figures close to law enforcement act, perhaps, is understandable: they have to somehow distance themselves from the blow and not give a more or less justified answer to a very important question: how did a person who had an indictment and for whom restraint (by signing an agreement not to leave the country) was chosen as the precautionary measure freely leave the country?

But already several journalists too have repented (these sentiments are expressed also in the Yerevan Press Club review [AM]), that before blaming law enforcement officials for inaction, we must confess our own sins and the necessary conclusions must be drawn.

Very well. Let’s try to understand what, in this case, journalists did that they shouldn’t have done and will no longer do. 

The main argument, perhaps, is that which Samvel Martirosyan wrote on his Facebook page, that people identify themselves however they wish to reporters and that’s how it’s reported. “Without checking beforehand, you can’t declare someone the leader of a movement. From the start, the reporter must be aware if there is such a movement, how many people are involved, what they do, and so on.”

That’s a good point, save for one reservation: it’s not always that movements or civic initiatives are officially registered with the justice ministry. To be precise, mostly they’re not registered. Let me be forgiven for this comparison, but neither the “We are against foreign-language schools” initiative was registered nor Dem Em (“I am against”); No to Plunder; Stand Up, Armenia; and so on.

I know the possible objection, that the comparison is not appropriate, since the aforementioned initiatives are far more massive. 

Very well. Now recall how that National Liberation Movement (NLM) appeared on the scene. On August 5, 2013, Vahan Martirosyan called an outdoor press conference and as the start of that, as he described it, “spontaneous” movement, announced the protest demonstration outside the government building, during which they were going to demand suspending the tuition fees hike. See the photos and video [AM] from that demonstration three days later and be sure: was Vahan Martirosyan standing alone in front of the government building?

The education and science minister on August 20 even met with the NLM-ers, provided clarification on the tuition fees, and again, Vahan Martirosyan was not the only one in the room. 

In February 2014, he spearheaded another initiative, claiming that ArmRosGazprom was lowering the caloric value of natural gas. Reported by Arman Suleymanyan, Martirosyan appeared in a CivilNet TV report titled “Let’s Brew Coffee in Georgia” [AM]: boiling water under the same conditions in both Armenia and Georgia and finding that more gas and time was required in Armenia. In April, he had organized a protest outside the government building regarding this issue. And again he wasn’t alone, for the simple reason that neither the first nor the second issue concerned only him.

But my other respectable colleague, Gegham Manukyan, wrote in a recent Facebook status update [AM]: “When for years you were making Vahan Martirosyan practically into a national hero, getting an interview every minute, unilaterally accepting every word he uttered like melted better, declaring [him] the leader of some inexplicable national front, and blaming doctors for not providing [official] reference letters on carrying out abortions, why are you now railing so much for this last despicable deed of his? If the act of audio recording disappears from the media sector, you won’t turn a common [man] into a public figure, so that the Azerbaijani propaganda machine won’t have difficulty in publishing his photos, won’t have a lack of video material. We inflated the balloon and it exploded in all our faces.”

In general, also a good point. But not that fair. Martirosyan’s remarks were never presented as one-sided (at least by professional news outlets). For instance, his claims on the caloric value of natural gas were accompanied by explanations [AM] by Gazprom Armenia’s media spokesperson. 

And then, when on August 14, 2015, Vahan Martirosyan said he was beaten by MP Mher Sedrakyan’s “myrmidons” and the accused was out of the country to provide an explanation (Sedrakyan did so much later), constrained, we even published comments by the MP’s driver [AM]. Several other news outlets published explanations by Martirosyan’s mother. 

And in general, the press has done much more than law enforcement agencies in this regard. The newspaper Zhoghovurd reported [AM] on September 1, when Martirosyan was still in Armenia, that he is simply a thief and stole $3,820 from National Academy of Sciences researcher Ruzanna Marguni, who had given Martirosyan and his wife refuge in her home. 

And then Ruzanna Marguni told the same news outlet that investigators examined her application briefly, approached it unprofessionally, resulting in Martirosyan managing to escape. And the most bizarre thing: she said that she told the investigators that she received news of Martirosyan’s leaving the country, to which the investigator told her that he will be arrested, when he gets the order “from upstairs”. “I asked, what ‘upstairs’? The investigator laughed and said, ‘from the very top’. Probably God has to tell them. I became angry, said why did you release him on a [signed promise not to leave the country]? He’s an outright criminal; he will flee.” 

And so the person in question fled to a country with which, for obvious reasons, we don’t have an extradition treaty, and so he won’t bear the responsibility for his crimes: theft and defamation. 

Now what lessons should journalists learn from what happened? Taking into account that after the Sedrakyan incident, the Prosecutor General’s August 24 statement [AM] read that “considering benchmark data and the sufficient grounds on V. Martirosyan’s health acquired during the investigation, relevant instructions have been given to assign a forensic psychiatric examination,” perhaps generally we should ask for a psychologist’s note from every press conference speaker beforehand? Or, nevertheless, a reference from the justice ministry?

Or perhaps we should generally stop reporting the activities of civic activists? After all, quite often, using our media reports as grounds, they later simply ask for political asylum, though neither the chosen country nor the statements made later until now had not been such a shock. 

Anna Israyelyan

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.