“This person [Pashinyan, ed.] does not understand the psychology of the people. He only knows that they can be intimidated. But he doesn’t understand that this can be done once, twice, [and only to] part of the people,” Aikazun Alvrtsyan, director of the Center for the Study of Armenian Issues in Western Armenia, said, commenting on the wave of repression.
“When you go against the Church, against everything holy that the Armenian people have,” it cannot end well. “This is the beginning of the end for this government,” Alvrtsyan stressed, commenting on the events, which began with the detention of Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan, and has now escalated to arrests of leading Church figures.
“The Church plays a special role in our lives. This prime minister has declared himself prime minister only in the Republic of Armenia, and is afraid of the authority of the Church and the Catholicos” and priests in general, whose authority among the people is “very great,” Alvrtsyan explained.
Pre-Election Posturing?
A year from now, Armenians will go to the polls for elections.
Pashinyan “wants to put psychological and moral pressure on the people from the opposition voting against him. He wants to kill two birds with one stone – to eradicate faith and power, spiritual power, naturally, that the Church has among the people, and weaken the Church” in preparation, according to Alvrtsyan.
The scenario unfolding in Armenia today is not like the one that’s engulfed Ukraine, Alvrtsyan fears.
The goal is the same: “to fragment, to eradicate the Orthodox faith altogether. That’s what I believe is happening here.”