Late last month, while putting the finishing touches on the next edition of our newspaper, Haykakan Zhamanak (The Armenian Times), we heard an explosion outside our office. Staff rushed to find my car on fire.

That explosion was not unanticipated nor was the announcement by Armenia's police that the car had caught fire due to technical problems. But the real problem is censorship, for the explosion was but the latest offensive in Armenia's hidden war against the press.

For us the battle for press freedom began in 1999, soon after founding our newspaper, then named Oragir (Diary). It made an instant impact, but not in the way we hoped. Throughout 1999 there were more court cases against Oragir than against all other Armenian media combined since independence in 1991.

In one case, the prosecutor's office brought criminal charges against me as editor-in-chief: I was accused of slandering an Armenian political figure and of insulting a state official. As a result, the court sentenced me to one year in prison.

By a lucky twist, however, on the day the court ruled, Lord Russell Johnston, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, was in Armenia. Johnston expressed his opinion about my case in his talks with the authorities, which then decided not to send me to prison. I remained free, only to be monitored by the police.

New charges

A second trial against our newspaper had worse consequences: a US$25,000 fine (a huge sum here) based on allegations that we had damaged the reputation of the Mika Armenia Company, controlled by the so-called Karabakh clan that helps rule Armenia. The court's verdict was based on falsified documents. Following the verdict, bailiffs confiscated our equipment, prohibited the publishing house from printing our newspaper, and, most importantly, seized our business bank accounts, rendering us unable to pay the fine.

These events were initiated by a court wrangle with Serzh Sargsyan, then the minister of national security and internal affairs. We demanded an apology for his impugning our paper's reputation; he accused of us of libel. These manipulations worked: Oragir was closed down, which forced us to appear under the name Haykakan Zhamanak .

When my time under police supervision ended, the prosecutor's office quickly brought a new criminal case of slander against me. This time, Armenia's chief of civil aviation had sued me. Investigations lasted several months, before pressure from international organisations and public opinion forced the prosecutor to drop the charges. Later, after his dismissal from his post, that same civil aviation chief confessed that Armenian President Robert Kocharyan had advised him to file his lawsuit.

At a press conference just hours after my car exploded, I announced my suspicion that the explosion had been organised by Gagik Tsarukyan, an MP nicknamed 'Dodi Gago' and one of the country's richest men and a close friend of the president's family.

Many Armenians believe that Tsarukyan has carte blanche to do whatever he wants, when he wants. Indeed, he even gets to write his own history. For although Tsarukyan was convicted of a sexual crime in the Soviet era, two years ago Armenia's courts exonerated him by vacating the decision of the Soviet court.

Indeed, there is something of a taboo on writing about Tsarukyan, and with good reason: not only is he rich, but also he controls an army of obedient skinheads. Armenia frequently sees skinheads attacking reporters covering opposition rallies and once severely beating a leading opposition politician. Five years ago, Tsarukyan himself led his thugs in a break-in at our office, taking my staff hostage for several hours.

Recently, after reading some unflattering articles about him in our paper, Tsarukyan tried to invite me to a meeting. I refused. Armenia's paramount oligarch fumed. He promised to punish me, and that he would act the next time Haykakan Zhamanak criticized any well-known person. The car explosion occurred the day after we rebuked Armenia's police chief.

Soviet-era threats

None of us are surprised that the police are unwilling to investigate my car's explosion. They began to do so only 10 days later, when the fire brigade stated that the fire was likely the result of an explosion incited by 'outside interference'.

Such harassment is the everyday stuff of journalism in what Vladimir Putin calls the 'post-Soviet space'. Armenia may have adopted in 1995 a new Constitution with fine phrases about freedom of speech, but both the petty harassments and the mortal threats of the Soviet era remain.

Of course, we never believed that press freedom would come easily. We understood from the start that we would have to fight for it everyday. But we never imagined the terrifying lengths to which the state 'working hand-in-hand with the new oligarchic rich' would go to defeat our cause.

We will not be defeated. An incinerated car is a small price to pay in the battle for freedom.

NIKOL PASHINYAN is editor-in-chief of Haykakan Zhamanak , an independent newspaper in Armenia.