Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused the Armenian Apostolic Church and his political opponents of seeking to reignite Armenia’s conflict with Azerbaijan when he addressed the European Parliament on Wednesday.
Pashinian defended his administration’s crackdown on the church’s top clergy that led to the arrests of three archbishops and one bishop facing criminal charges rejected by them as politically motivated. He insisted that neither they nor opposition figures and supporters also prosecuted last year are political prisoners.
“The reality is that some clergymen, who have cynically violated all the rules of spiritual morality, thus making themselves vulnerable to foreign special services … have assumed the leadership of the war party in the Republic of Armenia, gathering around them Armenia’s former leaders, some forces associated with them and some Russia-based and pro-Belarusian oligarchs, and are trying to sacrifice Armenia’s independence to the interests of third countries,” he said.
“We will not allow a new conflict, a new war, we will not allow the consciousness, peace and independence gained at the cost of thousands of victims to be sacrificed for anti-Christian purposes,” he added in a 25-minute speech delivered in Strasbourg.
Pashinian went on to mention the Armenian parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7, saying that they should make peace with Azerbaijan “irreversible.”
In recent weeks, senior members of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party have signaled concerns that three opposition groups led by former President Robert Kocharian, Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian and another wealthy businessman, Gagik Tsarukian, may collectively win a majority in the next Armenian parliament and form a coalition government. They have said that the Armenian authorities “will not allow” such an outcome, raising more opposition fears of vote rigging or other foul play.
Opposition leaders maintain that agreements with Azerbaijan regularly touted by Pashinian will not lead to real peace between the two nations because they are based on unilateral Armenian concessions to Baku. They say that Pashinian’s appeasement policy will only encourage Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to make more demands on Armenia.
Pashinian launched his controversial campaign to depose Catholicos Garegin II shortly after the supreme head of the Armenian Church accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during an international conference in Switzerland last May. The four senior clergymen were jailed in the following months. Three of them have been moved to house arrest in recent weeks.
Earlier this year, law-enforcement authorities also indicted Garegin himself as well as six other archbishops and bishops. They were banned from leaving the country to attend an emergency episcopal conference held in Austria last month. The 25 participants of the conference voiced support for the Catholicos and condemned the crackdown on the church in a joint statement.
Critics maintain that Pashinian’s drive to oust Garegin violates Armenia’s constitution and laws guaranteeing the autonomy of the ancient church and its separation from the state. Two Western religious rights groups echoed these claims earlier in February. One of them, the Vienna-based the Forum for Religious Freedom Europe, spoke of “grave threats to freedom of religion or belief” in Armenia.
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Direct link to this article: https://www.armenianclub.com/2026/03/12/rfe-rl-pashinian-slams-armenian-church-opposition-in-eu-parliament-speech/
