In its annual worldwide survey on the media, Freedom House has once again categorized Armenia as “not free,” a situation which has been the case since 2002 when the pro-opposition A1 Plus TV station was taken off the air. A huge question mark then hung over the future of the company as many of its staff left to work elsewhere.

The Council of Europe and international media watchdogs decried the move seen by many as a precursor to later attempts to silence the press in the run-up to the presidential election held less than a year later. However, demands to let A1 Plus return to the air fell on deaf ears.

In June last year, the European Court of Human Rights even ruled in the station’s favour in an action against the government, but the victory was only symbolic. The station still remains without a broadcasting frequency. Instead, and undaunted by attempts to silence its voice, A1 Plus went online.

Also using blogs and YouTube, especially during last year’s contraversial presidential election, its web site is probably the most visited online news source in Armenia, with around 10,000 visits per day. That might not seem much, but in a country where Internet penetration stood at 5.7 percent in 2007, it’s quite something.

Now, in an effort to expand its reach, the banned station this week turned its attention to an estimated 1.9 million mobile phone subscribers in the country, offering short video headlines for users to download. True, the news is hardly extensive, but it does represent another attempt to take on governmental control of the broadcast media.

[…]

The full post where comments can be left is available on the Frontline Club blog.

Ahead of next month’s Global Voices Online Summit in Budapest, Hungary, I’ve just compiled a backgrounder on the role blogs played during the recent presidential election and especially in its immediate aftermath. Armenia will be specifically included in a session, The Wired Electorate in Emerging Democracies.

Arguably the most active country in the South Caucasus when it comes to blogging, the content and relevance of blogs on Armenia was at first nothing really worth writing home about. Most posts by foreigners living in the capital almost entirely focused on how good their lives were while others were simply copy and paste exercises reproducing articles without comment. Perhaps the only time when bloggers started to write original posts was whenever the Armenian Genocide came into the focus of the international media.

Even so, the situation slowly started to change in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary election as the political climate intensified in preparation for the inevitable transfer of power which occurred during this year’s presidential election. Under the constitution, the president is prohibited from holding office for two consecutive terms and as the then incumbent head of state was coming to the end of his second, Armenia would elect a new leader.

Of course, this being the former Soviet Union where vote-rigging and vote-buying are as much part of the election process as physically casting a vote, it was make or break time for the radical extra-parliamentary opposition in the country. And with the broadcast media controlled by the government, it was only natural that the Internet would be seen as a natural medium to disseminate alternative information.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

After a 20-day state of emergency was declared in Armenia when clashes between security services and supporters of the former president, Levon Ter-Petrossian, broke out on the streets of the capital following the disputed 19 February presidential election, access to the media has been severely restricted. According to presidential decree, local media outlets can now only publish official news and political propaganda is banned.

[…]

Nevertheless, pro-Ter-Petrossian activists outside of the country have seized upon the opportunity to instead use blogs to disseminate information during what is to all intents and purposes a media blackout in the country. Interestingly, one such blogger, Artmika at Unzipped, likens it to the old Soviet practice of “samizdat.”

Samizdat (Russian: самиздат) was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries. Copies were made a few at a time, and those who received a copy would be expected to make more copies. This was often done by handwriting or typing.

This grassroots practice to evade officially imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.

Vladimir Bukovsky defined it as follows: “I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and [may] get imprisoned for it.”

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

A few weeks ago PanArmenian.Net reported that two representatives from Armenia will observe the 5 January 2008 presidential election in Georgia as part of the OSCE/ODIHR international observation mission. The web site of the Central Election Commission (CEC) of the Republic of Armenia named at least one of those representatives as Atom Mkhitaryan from the CEC’s Department of Foreign Relations.

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Following on from problems sending emails because ArmenTel is on an international blacklist for spam, it now seems as though I can’t access or update my main Oneworld Multimedia site or the Armenia Election Monitor 2008 blog. Instead, I have to use any other internet provider other than ArmenTel. For now, I’m not sure why I can access other sites inside and outside Armenia, but not my own. Whereas before I couldn’t send emails via an ArmenTel connection, I now also can’t receive them.

Anyway, this blog is thankfully not affected, but if anyone has any ideas as to why this situation has arisen please leave a comment. I’d also like to hear from other ArmenTel ISP users if the same is true for them. The URLS I can’t access are the following:

http://www.oneworld.am
http://blog.oneworld.am

After much speculation and earlier denials, RFE/RL reports that Armenia’s second mobile telecommunications network, VivaCell, has been sold to Russia’s main operator, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), for $430 million in a takeover bid that should raise some questions about its timing just months before the 2008 presidential election early next year. The takeover is already raising concerns about Russia’s dominance and monopoly over key strategic areas of the Armenian economy.

The deal came after weeks of negotiations reportedly involving the governments of the two countries. According to reports in the Armenian press, the authorities in Yerevan have played a large role in convincing K-Telecom’s official owner, Lebanese tycoon Pierre Fattouch, to sell his rapidly expanding VivaCell network to MTS.

The Armenian government was similarly said to have been a driving force behind last year’s sale of the ArmenTel national telecom company, which operates the country’s second cellular network, to another Russian wireless firm, Vimpelcom. The $500 million acquisition came shortly after President Robert Kocharian’s visit to Moscow.

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Well, it now appears as though ArmenTel is blocked for good. Given that the IP address is a generic one for all or most of its internet customers, I’m amazed that a company such as this could allow such a thing to happen.

Specified IP (212.73.64.41) has been removed an excessive number of times from the CBL already. Please contact cbl@cbl.abuseat.org for assistance.

I’ll email these guys, but I don’t see why I should have to. Makes me think that ArmenTel — Armenia’s main telecommunications company — is run by a bunch of cowboys.

cow·boy (kou’boi’)
n.

[…]

3. Slang A reckless person, such as a driver, pilot, or manager, who ignores potential risks.

If anyone out there is an IT specialist perhaps you can check to see what’s going on. Whatever the reason, this should not be happening.
I’ve already asked a friend to check whether the same thing happens for him from his computer via ArmenTel’s dialup service and it does.

Like I said — cowboys.

For nearly a week now, ArmenTel’s IP address that is used by all of its dialup customers has been blocked by CBL presumably because of spam coming out of Armenia. Each time it’s manually unblocked a few hours later it’s blocked again. Bad enough, but even worse is the fact that ArmenTel don’t appear to give a damn. Well, it’s how most organizations and companies are run here, but for a country that places such a priority on the development of the IT sector.

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For the past four days I’ve been unable to send any emails through Thunderbird and Outlook Express. Each time I try my mail server rejects the messages and says that my IP address has been blocked.

http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=212.73.64.41

Interestingly, this IP address is not one specific to my computer. Other ArmenTel dialup users I know also have the same IP address although as they use web-based mail services such as Yahoo and Hotmail the blacklisting doesn’t appear to affect them.

However, if the situation is as it appears, it’s quite outrageous and one that ArmenTel should address immediately. According to CBL, this is not the first time that such blacklisting has occurred.

IP Address 212.73.64.41 was found in the CBL.

It was detected at 2007-07-29 04:00 GMT (+/- 30 minutes), approximately 4 hours ago.

It has been relisted following a previous removal at 2007-07-07 21:57 GMT

If anyone else is experiencing similar problems or knows anything about this situation please leave a comment. If someone from ArmenTel is reading this post, please look into this situation immediately.

I can request a removal via the CBL site, but I find that such a situation existing for four days without the largest telecommunications and Internet company doing anything about it is quite ridiculous.

Given that my 2.5 year old Siemens CX65 mobile died on me a few days ago thanks to an apparently inherent design flaw with the circuit board, time for some mobile phone humour. Myrthe at The Armenian Odar has more.

Earlier today I met a girl from Lebanon who had brought some things from my boyfriend’s parents for us. We didn’t know each other and we were supposed to meet on the Republic Square. This is part of the phone conversation we had when we were trying to find each other.

She: Are you standing in front of the museum?
I: Yes.

She: Are you wearing a black summer dress?
I: Yes.

She: Okay, I think I see you. Are you talking on the phone right now?
I: ….

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Well, I never thought I’d say this, but ArmenTel is getting better since they were taken over by the Russians. Before, Internet was a pain, but I just received some telemarketing phone call alerting me to ArmenTel’s new internet service. Given that they supply the line to the other ISPs in Armenia it makes sense, and not least because they can also undercut them in terms of price.

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