ArmInfo. A September Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict cited the “catastrophic impact” of the long-running conflict “on the cultural heritage and property of the region, for which both Armenia and Azerbaijan have a responsibility.” This is stated in the US State Department annual Report on International Religious Freedom: Armenia.
The report notes, “The constitution states that everyone has freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. It recognizes the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) as the national church and preserver of national identity but also establishes separation of religious organizations and the state. The law prohibits, but does not define, proselytism, which may be interpreted as forced conversion.”
According to the report, “The trial continued of a prominent Baha’i lawyer, Edward Manasyan, charged in 2017 with organizing illegal immigration; Baha’i community members said they believed the charges were brought because of his religion. The country’s highest court of appeal, the Court of Cassation, rejected a Baha’i appeal alleging the government had illegally wiretapped the group and used the information gathered to prosecute Manasyan. Yezidi human rights activist Sashik Sultanyan was indicted on charges of “inciting hatred” based on off-the-record comments he made to a journalist criticizing the treatment of Yezidis in the country that were surreptitiously recorded and posted online by the journalist. Sultanyan’s prosecution drew strong criticism from international human rights groups.
In February, the government announced it planned to remove a course on the history of the Armenian Church from the mandatory school curriculum as part of a broader educational reform, generating significant public debate. A September Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict cited the “catastrophic impact” of the long-running conflict “on the cultural heritage and property of the region, for which both Armenia and Azerbaijan have a responsibility.” Representatives of some religious minorities, such as the Seventh-day Adventists and several evangelical groups, as well as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, reported that public attitudes towards them had generally improved compared with the previous year and reported little or no negative content in the media during the year. Anonymous social media users, however, continued to target the evangelical Word of Life Church with online hate speech and harassment,” the report reads.
” Some members of the Jewish community and civil society members reported that antisemitism, including negative speech by members of the public and vandalism, increased after Azerbaijan used Israeli-supplied weapons during intensive fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the fall of 2020. During June parliamentary elections, an opposition figure who had never held elected office criticized the Word of Life Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses, referring to them as “sects,” a term these religious groups did not use to describe themselves and which was generally perceived as pejorative. Human rights groups stated that verbal targeting of religious minorities, both on and offline, decreased during the year, as the individuals who had previously targeted religious groups largely pivoted to discussing the aftermath of fall 2020 fighting and COVID-19. On February 12, the Holocaust and Genocide Memorial was vandalized for the third time since the 2020 fighting. Representatives of minority religious groups stated that societal and family pressure remained a major deterrent for ethnic Armenians to practice a religion other than the Armenian Apostolic faith. The U.S. Ambassador and other embassy officials continued to promote religious tolerance, respect for religious minorities, and interfaith dialogue during meetings with government officials. Embassy representatives raised with government officials and members of parliament the cases of criminal prosecution of Yezidi and Baha’i leaders and monitored their trials. The Ambassador and other embassy officials regularly consulted with religious groups, including the AAC, evangelical Christians and other Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Church of Jesus Christ), Yezidis, the Jewish community, Apostolic Assyrians, Pentecostals, and Baha’is, and individual members of the Muslim community, to discuss the state of religious freedom in the country. Embassy officials engaged government officials and civil society representatives to discuss the impact of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on religious group