Following the episodes of Nikol Pashinyan’s campaign related to the army, including the reaction of the leader of the country to the emotional but fair demands of the soldiers, the missing in the war, the parents and relatives of the soldiers who died in the fire in the Azat shelter, why is it that sometimes these people are not given the opportunity to speak, I remembered an anonymous article published in “Haykakan Zhamanak” in October 2010 article-editorialwith the caption “We continue to kill ourselves”.

At the beginning of the article, reference is made to the 20-year-old pastor Manvel Saribekyan, who was kidnapped by Azerbaijan at the same time and killed in Azerbaijani captivity.

“I don’t believe that twenty-year-old Manvel Saribekyan got lost, and the Azerbaijanis arrested the Armenian border violator. I am sure that it was necessary to find a “saboteur”, they violated our border and kidnapped the Armenian youth in order to weave an absurd anti-Armenian myth. Therefore, the guilt of Manvel’s tragic death lies on the shoulders of the RA authorities.

 I understand that with this statement I am attacking the reputation of the most combative army in the region, raising doubts about the reliability of our borders, but I don’t believe it. Maybe I’m wrong. What is that? if the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia makes mistakes every God’s day, I can make mistakes too. Especially since my mistake is unlikely to be fatal for Armenia. And the mistakes of Seyran Ohanyan and his owners not only plunge the country into the abyss, but also cause us to hear at least once a week that an Armenian soldier committed suicide.

According to us, Armenian prisoner Manvel Saribekyan was killed. Or the beasts and monsters tormented him so much that the tortured young man saw no other option but to commit suicide. Both are possible… None of us can boast that falling into the hands of the enemy, we will not see suicide as the only way out. What kind of flaming definitions are being made about Azerbaijanis, how is the catchphrase “Turk remains Turk” making waves again?: How do these same people behave when a monstrous bot from our army is smacking the air? It is known how they behave. they blame those who raised the alarm about the situation in the Armenian army,” writes the anonymous columnist of Nikol Pashinyan’s family newspaper, perhaps himself, and continues.

“If they haven’t completely lost their human face, why don’t this same Seyran Ohanyan and his masters shudder to think that there are such monsters in the army that make a soldier’s life so hellish that he prefers voluntary death?” On native soil, in the environment of his fellow countrymen. Are those who promote suicide hypotheses really so hopelessly stupid, square and soulless that they don’t understand that suicide is something more terrible than murder? If a soldier commits suicide, isn’t it clear that he is in a desperate situation, having to hang the rope around his own neck? Isn’t it terrible? Why is no one punished after that, why the commander? not fired and judged,Why don’t the RA Defense Minister and Chief of Staff resign? Why?

Because Armenians are puppets, aren’t they Turks? Do they kill themselves tenderly or “suicide”?

Because our soldiers are romantic guys, they look at the sky at night and think how endless the world is and how small a creature man is, and feeling their own powerlessness against that mysterious world, they decide to die so that the “global” question marks don’t smack their young brains.

Well, we declared that a Turk remains a Turk, we spilled our beans, and then…? And what name should we give to Armenian Seyran Ohanyan, who after so many tragedies tries to justify even the sadistic officer of the famous video tape – well, he was drunk, they say, he is such a good guy when he is not drunk. What do you say… The tears of their mothers are tears, the tears of the crying mothers of soldiers killed in the army and “suicides” are tears? Why do they protect executioners and murderers with their teeth?

It’s not difficult, isn’t it, to judge the criminals and more or less openly present themselves to the society, to the grieving mothers and say, “I’m sorry, if you can… Those who do not see the innocent blood spilled in their own house and bravely wave their fists at Azerbaijanis from afar, will they be very angry if I say that they are protecting them because they are executioners and murderers? I say get angry. Those who sponsor executioners are more dangerous. By sponsoring them, the leadership of Armenia encourages the executioners – continue in the same spirit, we are the owners.”

Let us first remind here that Manvel Saribekyan (born on February 27, 1990), a resident of Ttujur village of Gegharkunik region, was captured on September 11, 2010. According to the information circulated, the 20-year-old young man had taken several cattle to the pasture, and lost his orientation due to the fog in the “Keghut” camp, ended up on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and was captured by the Azerbaijanis.

On October 5, 2010, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan and the Military Prosecutor’s Office issued a joint statement that Saribekyan committed suicide at the place of preliminary detention, but before that he was shown on Baku television, and also managed to claim that “the Armenian pastor is a detective who was captured during a sabotage operation.”

A month after the murder, only Azerbaijan decided to hand over Manvel Saribekyan’s body to Armenia in Tavush region. I myself was present, the picture was terrible. The Armenian pastor was subjected to torture, inhuman treatment, physical violence on his body and there were many traces of torture.

ECHR in 2020 too had recorded that Azerbaijan violated Manvel Saribekyan’s right to life. In other words, the European Court of Human Rights decided that in terms of Manvel Saribekyan’s death, there had been a violation of Article 2 of the UN Convention (right to life) and Article 3 of the Convention on Torture (prohibits torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”).

Let’s go back to the article of “Haykakan Zhamanak” in 2010, where the RA authorities were blamed for the capture of the pastor, where, in fact, suicide cases within the army were equated with what the enemy did, and the behavior of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in 2026. He gets extremely angry when he is blamed for the blood of several thousand boys in the 44-day war, when he himself declared: “we could have prevented the war, as a result we would have had the same situation, of course, without victims”, or he gets excited and upset when the relatives of the boys who were burned to ashes by the fire in the Azat shelter remind them of this, they say to the leadership of the 2nd Army Corps of the RA Armed Forces released, a trial is underway. And shameful things are revealed in the trial. But Prime Minister Pashinyan forgets that he previously demanded the resignation of the Minister of Defense and the head of the General Staff in response to suicide cases.

By the way, after the fire at Azat’s residence, Vilen Gabrielyan, still a member of the CP, said the same thing in his conversation with “CivilNet”. demand 

“If I were in the opposition, I would demand the resignation of the Minister of Defense. But I’m not in the opposition, I’m Suren Papikyan’s teammate. therefore, I support him in solving the problems in the army,” Gabrielyan emphasized, asserting that the RA armed forces need a serious transformation, because the system does not work in line with the existing challenges.

As a matter of fact, Gabrielyan, who submitted an application to become a member of parliament again today, has softened his behavior and mentality.

In the context of the article, let us recall that during one of the briefings this year, journalists asked Pashinyan a question about the facts of the war crimes committed in the sovereign territory of Armenia, the shooting of Armenian prisoners and the torture of women, and raised the issue of the demand to punish the relevant officials and military of Azerbaijan, to which Pashinyan responded that the solution of the issue requires a broader perspective.

“I do not agree that we, you and I, should look each other in the eye and deceive each other, and even more so, deceive our people, because it is a double-edged sword. Those rumors exist now, and no one denies the facts, but we have to understand what we are talking about, and that is the trap from which we cannot get out,” he continued.

Can we remember Pashinyan’s journalistic claim in 2010 that? “The leadership of Armenia encourages executioners”? For Pashinyan, the executioner has always been and remains the former authorities of RA.

You will say that now there is a different geopolitical situation, “peace” has been established, but does the geopolitical situation cancel the question of the authorities’ responsibility in the cases described by journalist Nikol Pashinyan or the anonymous columnist, moreover, it is not about a few thousand victims… Of course not, and at some point, when Pashinyan becomes the opposition, won’t he return to the logic of the above-mentioned articles, even if we are dealing with different geopolitical situations?

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