Mass media representatives will not face a criminal liability for slander and insult but instead will have to pay large fines according to an amendment package to the RA Civil and Criminal Codes proposed by the coalition deputies of the National Assembly of Armenia.

The opponents of the draft (which envisages from 500,000 drams to 1,000,000 drams (about $1,300-$5,000 fine for slander of insult) see the measure as a tool to bankrupt unwanted mass media and take financial revenge.

According to the law in force, mass media are punished by fines ($260-$1,300) for a first offense of spreading materials containing slander and insult, and up to three years of imprisonment for repeating it the second time.

The new draft amendment does not define an imprisonment; however, the amount of fines is almost quadrupled.

Independent lawmaker Victor Dallakyan stated that the draft “is directly connected with the upcoming Parliamentary elections” and that “it will become a tool in the authorities’ hands.”

“This is simply a means to bankrupt media, and in case the courts are not independent, it would be very easy to realize that,” Dallakyan told ArmeniaNow. Freedom of Speech Protection Committee expert Mesrop Harutyunyan also insists that the circulated draft aims to silence media critics.

“In case this draft is adopted, we will have brilliant and perfect elections in 2012, because there will be no one to register violations and cases of beating. That is to say, the press will be like the current TV broadcasting,” Harutyunyan says.

In contrast, the authors of the draft amendments believe that the adoption of such a draft law will give an opportunity to make the mass media sphere healthier, pushing out those mass media that use unethical means that include slander and insult.

Republican Galust Sahakyan insists that the draft amendments will restrain, but not limit, freedom of speech.

“We need the law. What shall we do with those who insult us? Should we conduct a vendetta against them?” Sahakyan asks at the National Assembly. Naira Zohrabyan, from Prosperous Armenia Party, who was a journalist at the oppositional ‘Haykakan Zhamanak’ (Armenian Time) daily, is also for the draft. “Such an amount for financial liability (fines) must be defined which would restrain the desire of slandering and insulting, but at the same time would not become a tool of closing a mass media by means of bankrupting it,” Zohrabyan told ArmeniaNow.