Supporters of the Armenian Apostolic Church have staged a protest against the Armenian Foreign Minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, due to his government’s treatment of the church.
The protest took place at a meeting last week of the Council of Europe, where Mirzoyan was speaking. Mirzoyan was also questioned by British Conservative MP, Sir Edward Leigh, who suggested the Armenian government was guilty of violating freedom of speech and religion in the country.
Relations between the government of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Church have been strained since Pashinyan came to power following the “Velvet Revolution” in 2018. Relations declined still further after Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war and subsequent territorial concessions to Azerbaijan in 2023–2024.
The leader of the Church, Catholicos Karekin II, has criticised the government’s foreign policy failures and apparently given support to opposition protesters.
The government in turn has cracked down on what it perceives to be dissent, with between a third and one half of the Church’s bishops reportedly being arrested. One of them, Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan, was sentenced to two years in jail in September for supposedly encouraging the overthrow of the government by undemocratic means.
Armenian prosecutors justified his imprisonment by pointing to a number of statements made by the archbishop appearing to call for a coup. In one instance, he told News.am, “I called for a coup to save the country from this madman, they are not saving it, they are also guilty of all this. This is not just a call, it must be done.”
Protesters accused Pashinyan of "political persecution and the imprisonment of individuals for their political or religious positions undermine democracy, public trust, and the rule of law" and called in a petition for "an immediate end to political repression in the Republic of Armenia".
Pashinyan, has claimed that his government is attempting to save the Church from “anti-Christian” and “anti-state” activists. He has further said that the Church will come under greater government control, with the intention of creating a “real, pure, and state-centred Church”. Critics have accused Pashinyan of acting like a Soviet-era dictator.
At a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Sir Edward Leigh questioned Foreign Minister Mirzoyan about his government’s actions. He described the Armenian Apostolic Church as “one of the last bastions of independent thought” in the country.
He accused Pashinyan of trying to create a church that is “banned from dissenting from the state … to this end he has arrested a third of the bishops of Armenia. How is this anything other than a violation of the democratic rights of freedom of religion and freedom of speech that the Council of Europe is supposed to uphold?”
In response, Mirzoyan stated that Leigh was referring to a “rumour” that needed to be “clarified”.
He said, “I completely disagree with some of your qualifications and I’m afraid your information is not completely true … There is no persecution of clergymen in Armenia.”
“Some citizens of Armenia call for the violent removal of democratically elected government from power through coup d’etats and … public calls for assassination of some of the leadership of Armenia – including myself by the way …. The very sad reality in Armenia [is] we do have some clergymen who did this.”
