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The NA deputy Tatevik Hayrapetyan delivered a speech at PACE Summer Session during the debate of the report Media Freedom, Public Trust and People’s Right to Know.

“Dear colleagues,

Ladies and gentlemen,

I also value the discussion we are having here. I think it is very important to understand what kind of role the media can play. I would like to ask ourselves to look at it from another perspective.

For instance, can free media and the journalists who have freedom to write, freedom to create discourses sometimes avoid wars? I was thinking recently that, for instance, judging from the speeches my Azerbaijani colleagues are giving here when they are proudly talking about so-called victory in the war, I was thinking what it would be like if Azerbaijan had free media and discourse on peace, if the topic of peace weren't taboo in Azerbaijan, if they had freedom to talk about the solutions which were proposed by different mediators during the negotiation process, which lasted for 20 years. What would it be like if Azerbaijan did not have a blacklist of the journalists who were visiting Nagorno-Karabakh and writing about the humanitarian aspect of the conflict? What would it be like if, during the war, Azerbaijanis didn't attack Armenian and international journalists, putting aside that they were wearing press armlets?

In the end, unfortunately, even after the ceasefire statement, recently we have witnessed that the UEFA was even surprised that Azerbaijanis rejected giving accreditation to some journalists who have Armenian surnames from Armenia and Russia. All of this, shows that topic of peace, the discourse of peace was taboo in Azerbaijan. Now my Azerbaijani colleagues, unfortunately, think that the only way was war because it was that propagated.

I value this report and I think getting that media freedom is important. With their work, which is very hard, sometimes they work in very hard conditions, sometimes journalists can even help to avoid wars and can even help to fight against hate speech and hate propaganda,” the MP noted.