ArmeniaNow -- The Reporters without Borders (RWB) media watchdog’s annual report on press freedom for 2011-2012 states that as compared to 2010 Armenia has improved its position by 24 points, enjoying the 77th position instead of the previous 101st. RWB, however, does not consider this to be great progress.

“Armenia’s 24-place rise in the index seems spectacular, but in fact it has just gone back to where it was three years ago, before the brutal crackdown after the disputed 2008 elections. The media are, nonetheless, subject to constant judicial harassment and the size of the damages demanded in lawsuits is intimidating. Self-regulation is a major challenge that still needs to be tackled,” the report reads.

During the recent years Armenia has had regress in human rights related reports, which is caused by the post-election bloody clashes in 2008, when ten citizens of Armenia died and hundreds of people were arrested. RWB believes that opposition mass media, which used to be targets of assaults quite often in years of Armenia’s former President Robert Kocharyan’s regime, now enjoy more freedom. Nevertheless, according to the report, independent and opposition press continues to face censorship; however now the censorship is exercised through more civilized, judicial pressures.

Armenia’s neighbor Azerbaijan is currently the 162nd among 179 countries included in the report with its press freedom index (in 2010 Azerbaijan was the 152nd), Georgia is in the 104th place (it was the 100th in 2010), Iran is the 175th, keeping its position unchanged, Turkey is in the 148th place (it was the 138th in 2010).

“There was a dramatic rise in the number of arrests in Azerbaijan where Ilham Aliyev’s autocratic government did not hesitate to jail netizens (derived from ‘net’ and ‘citizen’ words), abduct opposition journalists and bar foreign reporters in order to impose a news blackout on the unrest,” the report says.

In terms of press freedom the list of the countries is headed by Finland, Norway, Estonia and the Netherlands.