In separate statements made on Tuesday, the Forum for Religious Freedom Europe (FOREF Europe) and Christian Solidarity International (CSI) decried criminal charges brought over the weekend against six more Armenian archbishops and bishops amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s continuing efforts to depose Catholicos Garegin II.
“FOREF Europe condemns these developments as grave threats to freedom of religion or belief, a core human right enshrined in international law,” read a statement released by the Vienna-based watchdog. “We call on the Armenian authorities to cease interference in church affairs, release those detained on dubious charges, and restore mechanisms for spiritual support in public institutions.”
“We are witnessing unlawful actions directed against religious freedom and the constitution in Armenia … Practices especially against the Armenian Apostolic Church are unacceptable legally, politically and ethically,” said Jan Figel, the FOREF Europe president who previously served as the European Union’s special envoy for freedom of religion.
“This is another escalation in the government’s campaign against the church,” John Eibner, the CSI president based in Switzerland, told a news conference in Yerevan. “These attacks are designed to render the church incapable of being a voice for Armenia’s national interests.”
Eibner met the press as he visited Armenia at the head of a CSI delegation joined by Erich Vontobel, a member of the Swiss parliament. They were allowed to visit Archbishop Bagrat Galstian in a prison in downtown Yerevan earlier on Tuesday.
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian kisses a cross held by Catholicos Garegin II during an Easter Mass at Yerevan's St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, April 21, 2019.
Galstanian was arrested last June the day before Pashinian threatened to forcibly remove Garegin from his Echmiadzin headquarters. Galstanian and his 17 supporters are now standing trial on coup charges denied by them. Two other archbishops and one bishop were jailed later in 2025 on different charges which they too reject as politically motivated.
The six other senior clergymen loyal to the Catholicos are prosecuted for recommending the recent defrocking of another bishop who broke ranks in November to join Pashinian’s campaign against the supreme head of the church. Law-enforcement authorities did not arrest any of them. Still, they were banned from leaving Armenia to attend an emergency conference of the church’s top clergy in Austria. Their lawyers and the church’s Mother See believe Pashinian is thus trying to scuttle the conference scheduled for February 16-19.
Pashinian began his campaign in late May right after Garegin accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, destroying the region’s Armenian churches and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during an international conference in Switzerland. The premier’s detractors say he wants to please Azerbaijan or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe.
Pashinian said until December that Garegin and other top clerics at odds with him must go because they had secret sex affairs in breach of their vows of celibacy. He has given a different reason for his campaign since then, accusing them of spying for a foreign country, presumably Russia. He has not offered any proof of the allegation publicly dismissed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on January 20.