Fake News: I Have Honor Alliance Candidate Gayane Papoyan Was Arrested
Verdict – Fake News
On June 19, information was released that while giving out bribes, the deputy candidate of I Have Honor Alliance, Gayane Papoyan, was arrested. This information is false: Gayane Papoyan was not arrested. After the misinformation started circulating through the internet, Papoyan said in a Facebook post that she was in Yeghegnadzor, defending another I Have Honor deputy candidate – Gor Sedrakyan. Moreover, Gayane Papoyan is not a deputy candidate. Her name is not on the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) list of the I Have Honor Alliance.
How Did the News Spread
A day before the snap elections, the supporters of the current government started circulating the information that a deputy candidate from I Have Honor Alliance, Gayane Papoyan, has been arrested. A social media user Kirk Krkoryan made a post about the arrest on Facebook. The Civil Contract Party member Vazgen Manukyan wrote about this too (but removed the post later). Several Facebook groups and pages, as well as media and clickbait sites, shared the news. According to these sources, the reason for the alleged arrest was the distribution of bribes.
When Did the News Spread
Gayane Papoyan is a lawyer defending the I Have Honor MP Candidate Gor Sedrakyan who was arrested yesterday by the Special Investigation Service (SIS). On June 19, Gayane Papoyan wrote on Facebook that the SIS has imprisoned Gor Sedrakyan unlawfully and that she would be protecting his interests. The information about Gayane Papoyan’s imprisonment started spreading shortly after this post.
Gayane Papoyan Is Not an MP Candidate and She Was Not Arrested
Gayane Papoyan’s name does not appear in any of the lists published by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC). Papoyan herself denied the news about her arrest shortly after the misinformation began to spread.
“Dead friends, relatives, nobody has arrested me, I am not being prosecuted. Please do not worry.
The news on the internet that I was imprisoned does not correspond to reality”, she wrote.
To answer Media.am’s and Factcheck.ge’s inquiry, the SIS also refuted the information about Gayane Papoyan's arrest.
Kirk Kirkoryan is one of the first sources to share the news. Later, he published another post, where he wrote that he was informed that Papoyan had not actually been arrested. Kirkoryan did not, however, delete the original post with the disinformation, which continued to spread on the internet.
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