In countries such as Armenia where the mainstream broadcast media is firmly under the control of government-connected businessmen and/or officials, while the traditional print and online media largely reflects the opposition in the country, there is no doubt that blogs have an important role to play in the dissemination of information, news and views.

[…]

But rather than change as the result of alternative, opposition voices seeking to involve themselves in the internal political life of the country, the situation might now be changing because of four bloggers who protested on and offline against an event staged early this week at a Yerevan school to promote peace and reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

[…]

The four Live Journal bloggers — Uzogh, Pigh, Aerial_vortex and Akunamatata_ser — were however angered by the attempt to hold such an event at a school run by Armenia’s former Minister of Education, Ashot Bleyan, who is notorious for what many consider to be “anti-Armenian” positions on Nagorno Karabakh and Genocide recognition. Speaking to Global Voices for this post, Uzogh explains why the four bloggers staged the action.

On December 14, the day when the press release announcing the event at Bleyan’s school was sent to public, I wrote a post [RUS] expressing my anger towards the organizers and sponsors of this event. The post resulted in many comments and a rather long discussion with Mark Grigoryan (Armenian journalist now residing in UK).

Some of the participants of this discussion suggested doing something to make this event a failure, but I preferred to take some time out for reflection before resorting to action. A day later, I concluded that an aggressive action would not result in the failure of the event, but would rather turn the organizers into some kind of victims which would lead to increased publicity and additional fund raising opportunities.

That’s why I instead preferred to pursue a tactic of mockery and shared this idea with a few bloggers that had already expressed their intention to join any protest action. We had a brainstorming at my house on Sunday and figured out what could be done.

I didn’t want to make this a public protest action, and none of us are members of any political party or non-formal group etc, so we did not aim to attract a lot of supporters. This was the protest by a few men and citizens, and not a civic action. At its core was the concept that we didn’t like the strategy of unilateral reconciliation through the brain-washing of children.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.