Armenian Parliament adopts controversial bill on online surveillance

On the second attempt, the National Assembly (Parliament) of Armenia has adopted the bill allowing monitoring citizens' travels and analyzing their phone calls during the state of emergency. The opposition was deprived of any chance to speak out against these amendments, the head of the faction "Prosperous Armenia" has stated.

During the second reading, held on March 31, the parliamentary opposition – the factions "Enlightened Armenia" and "Prosperous Armenia" – managed to take advantage of the absence of many MPs of the ruling faction and failed the initiative of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to allow citizens' shadowing. Two votes were not enough to adopt the amendments, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, who followed the online broadcast of the debates in the Parliament, has reported.

But on the same day, the government put forward the bill again asking to discuss it in an accelerated manner.

The above oppositional factions were not present at the repeated discussion of the amendments. Edmon Marukyan, the head of the "Prosperous Armenia", has stated that the MPs of his faction were late informed about the start of the extraordinary session. In his opinion, it was done deliberately in order to deprive the opposition of the opportunity to speak out.

The authorities should not have lobbied the amendments in this manner, said Shushan Doidoyan, Director of the Freedom of Information Centre. "This is a very sloppy, hastily written draft of amendments to the law. You can't succeed without an integrated approach. Meanwhile, authorities treat the bill as a magic wand with which they can stop the epidemic," she told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 1, 2020 at 11:29 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.