Jailed Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan issued a statement accusing the EU of “double standards” following Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s remarks at the European Parliament earlier in March. The full text of his statement is provided below.
“On March 11, 2026, at the European Parliament, the man serving as Prime Minister of Armenia stood before you and spoke. This is the same man who has, in my view, broken the constitutional order, turned against his own people, and led our country into loss, displacement, the suffering of our brothers in Baku prisons and deep national trauma.
In that speech, he chose to speak about me and about the Armenian Church. Once again, he repeated familiar distortions and falsehoods.
I will not address him. There is nothing left to clarify.
I address you, Members of the European Parliament.
You stood and applauded lies and falsehood.
Over time, your actions have revealed a clear pattern of double standards. When it serves your geopolitical interests, you ignore injustice and overlook truth, while continuing to speak loudly about human rights, dignity, and democracy.
What we witnessed was extraordinary. It is rare for a national leader to stand on an international stage and complain, or rather – gossip about his own people and critics. We have seen the opposite: that role is usually assumed by opponents of those in power or by those subjected to political persecution, seeking to draw attention to the injustices and abuses in their countries.
You too, became partakers in this distortion.
Many of you represent nations with deep historical experience. Nations that have faced occupation, division, and injustice. It is difficult to imagine you applauding those who enabled such chapters in your own history.
Instead, history shows you honored those who stood for truth and freedom. Figures like Archbishop Makarios, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Pope John Paul II.
I do not compare myself to them. But my struggle has been and remains for truth, justice, freedom, and reconciliation—defending the rights of my dispossessed people against lies, hatred, violence, and the surrender of the homeland; for a sovereign and independent state, against dependence and external pressure and dictates.
Why This Movement Began
Our movement began in March 2024.
The Prime Minister stood before residents of border villages, blackmailed and terrorized them by telling that if they resisted his decisions, they would be responsible for war within days. He shifted the burden of national security onto ordinary citizens and used fear as a tool.
In fact, three years earlier, he promised those same people that no land would ever be surrendered.
He made that promise during an election campaign. Incidentally, nothing about delimitation and demarcation was included in the ruling party’s electoral program. Just three years later, the vote-seeker was intimidating his own electorate. Today, those promises have been replaced with pressure and threats.
What Was Our Position
The issue of delimitation and demarcation has two layers: legal and moral.
Legal: Delimitation and demarcation should be carried out strictly in accordance with both domestic and international law and principles, and not under the threat of force.
Moral: A country’s leader cannot lie, deceive, threaten, or terrorize his own people; the process of delimitation and demarcation should be based on the principle of justice.
Therefore:
a) Delimitation and demarcation must be carried out within a holistic peace package. If it is meant to establish peace, then it should be only one component of a broader peace process or document—with respect for all legal standards, the establishment of justice, mutual concessions, Azerbaijan’s withdrawal from the territories it has occupied from Armenia, the right of return of the people of Artsakh, the release of Armenian prisoners and hostages, and the involvement of mediators and guarantors.
b) The process should begin not in Tavush, from the “disputed” territories of the 1990s, but from the territories of Armenia occupied by Azerbaijan in 2021–2024.
c) Delimitation and demarcation cannot be carried out unilaterally. It was promised that 900 hectares belonging to the village of Berkaber, currently under Azerbaijani control, would be returned to Armenia. This has not happened and will not happen.
d) Delimitation and demarcation concern the entire people and the state, as well as interstate relations—not merely the responsibility of two or three villages. Therefore, placing the entire burden on those communities is itself a crime.
So is demanding all this disinformation, or is it a clear human and civic demand?
Let me add that the same individual who in 2022 insisted that Armenia’s “internationally recognized borders” (which, I note, do not exist as such) were 29,800 square kilometers, suddenly decided in 2023 that they were 29,743 square kilometers. In other words, within one year, Armenia’s “internationally recognized borders” changed. On what basis? According to what principle, document, or map? Can such an approach inspire confidence in the fairness of delimitation and demarcation?
What Was The Government’s Response
First, an information attack through their so called “governmental factory of fakes,” their own media outlets—spreading insults, defamation, hate speech, and threats—accompanied by brutal police repression and unlawful detentions.
On June 12, 2024, in the center of Yerevan, peaceful demonstrators were bombarded with prohibited Zarya-3 explosives, sparing neither women nor children. Hundreds of people sustained injuries of varying severity, were beaten and subjected to violence, persecution, and threats of losing their jobs—practices that continue to this day.
And all this has taken place with your silent consent, because you were convinced—both in writing and verbally—that this was a “Russian project.” And you, being “fair people”, silently accepted this, even though, with or without persuasion, you would likely have convinced yourselves—because that is what your geopolitical position and interests require, not truth or justice.
What Was Your Response
Yes, you remained silent—and continue to remain silent—when there was war in Artsakh, when the people were fighting for their right to live freely. Are you not the ones who claim to uphold such values? Or does this people not have the right to have rights?
You remained silent when the people of Artsakh were subjected to ethnic cleansing from their homeland, when their leaders ended up in the prisons of Baku—subjected to inhuman treatment under distorted justice by a regime you consider economically beneficial.
You remain silent about the natural right of the people of Artsakh to return to their homeland, about the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage—yet you applaud the co-author of all this.
You may have heard: “Woe to you, hypocrites… blind guides, who strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:23–24).
Next Was Detention
Since June 25, 2025, I and 17 of my supporters, after nearly a year of surveillance, persecution, pressure, and harassment, have been under detention on clearly fabricated charges and falsified so-called “evidence.”
In an unprecedented manner reminiscent of Soviet repression, the Armenian Church—its Catholicos, senior clergy, national benefactors, and all those who have disagreed with the whims of your so-called democracy—have been persecuted. This includes members of parliament, businessmen, political figures, bloggers, youth, women, and others, many of whom are detained or restricted through various fabricated criminal cases.
And all this, once again, with your silent consent.
For nearly nine months now, what is called a “trial” has continued as a theater. Throughout these nine months, it has been accompanied by violations of the presumption of innocence by officials at various levels. Public Television has become an instrument of hate and defamation; the Prosecutor General and the head of the Investigative Committee openly spread falsehoods; the Anti-Corruption Committee refuses to initiate proceedings on reports of forgery. In other words, the entire legal and law enforcement system operates solely on the instruction and coercion of one individual—and that individual is your favorite, whom you will eventually sacrifice and discard when he becomes an outdated and useless tool.
And yes, all this is with your silent consent.
Final Word
Nevertheless, I am ready to remain in prison and endure all of this for as long as it takes for the liberation of my country—Armenia. I have no doubt that sooner or later my country will free itself from these chains, humiliations, and degradations, restore its life and its integrity—and at that time, you will silently applaud, but this time you will applaud your shame.
And indeed, our VICTORY HAS NO ALTERNATIVE.
May God bless and long live a free and just Armenia and Artsakh.”
Prisoner of conscience
Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan
March 22, 2026
Passion Sunday
https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2026/03/26/Bagrat-Galstanyan/3155097