The young man, Hayk Yeghian, was taken into custody on Wednesday two months after posting an offensive video about Pashinian on the TikTok platform. According to Roman Yeritsian, a lawyer representing him, Armenia’s Investigative Committee charged him with hooliganism.
The committee declined to comment on the criminal case. It was therefore not clear whether the law-enforcement agency will seek court permission to hold Yeghian in detention pending investigation.
Yeritsian denounced the case as “political persecution.” He said the case was swiftly opened after a complaint lodged by the leader of a pro-government party. The lawyer did not name the party.
Another Pashinian critic, a 55-year-old woman from the northwestern town of Akhurian, was remanded in pre-trial custody late last week for making what her lawyer described as a disparaging statement about the prime minister and his family in a private message sent online. The still unidentified woman was charged with hooliganism and a public call for violence.
Armenian prosecutors have not denied reports that they are monitoring people posting angry comments about Pashinian on social media and have even ordered criminal investigations into some of them. The independent daily Aravot reported in November a number of such orders and reader comments that prompted them.
Justice Minister Srbuhi Galian defended on Thursday criminal proceedings launched against online content.
“If such rhetoric contains elements of hatred or offensive phrases which pass the threshold for criminally punishable deeds, then this is legitimate,” Galian told reporters.
Anna Melikian of the Yerevan-based group Rights Protection Without Borders criticized these cases which she said have doubled since 2020. Melikian said that while insulting Pashinian or any other official is wrong, it does not warrant arrest and prosecution. The human rights activist also argued that law-enforcement authorities are targeting only government critics.
In November, two pro-opposition podcasters, Naren Samsonian and Vazgen Saghatelian, were arrested for verbally abusing parliament speaker Alen Simonian in response to his personal insults. Saghatelian remains in prison while Samsonian was moved to house arrest late last week after undergoing surgery in a Yerevan hospital.
No political allies or other supporters of Pashinian are known to have been prosecuted for offending or voicing threats against opposition politicians. In late December, one government loyalist publicly called for the murder of Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church whom Pashinian has been trying to depose. The Investigative Committee has not charged or even interrogated him.