Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Armenia, along with a number of citizens, have launched a lawsuit against Gevorg Altunyan, host of the program Tesankyun (\u201cView\u201d) on Armenia\u2019s public television. The reason for the suit is a statement made by Altunyan during the Nov. 11, 2010 broadcast of his show, where he mentions Arman Khachik Torosyan, who tortured then killed his parents on Nov. 8 in Sevan. Torosyan\u2019s neighbors say he is a Jehovah\u2019s Witness and how while escaping from the apartment after killing his parents, they heard him say, \u201cI am carrying out Jehovah-God\u2019s commands. My father is the Jehovah God. On his command, I am killing the devils and I\u2019ve already killed the first devils.\u201d This is what the TV host addressed during his show.<\/p>\n
During the broadcast, criticism was expressed not only toward Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, but also to all religious sects. Altunyan used such expressions as \u201cpack of sectarians\u201d (likening sects to wolves) and \u201cJehovahians and other such stupid things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs are asking the court \u201cto mandate the TV station retract the message, which disrespects the plaintiffs\u2019 honor and dignity, disseminated during the Tesankyun program that Arman Torosyan, accused of killing his parents, is a Jehovah\u2019s Witness.\u201d The plaintiffs also ask the court to mandate the TV station \u201cto immediately and publicly apologize for spreading the aforementioned misinformation.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}