Civilnet
By Siranush Adamyan
Armenia’s former Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian has called on foreign diplomats and international human rights organizations to take a public stand on what he describes as the country’s “accelerating descent into authoritarianism,” citing the detention of more than two dozen opposition figures, clergy, and activists as political prisoners.
In a letter sent this week to diplomatic missions and rights institutions, Oskanian said that individuals are being jailed not for credible criminal acts, but for their opposition to government policies. “Their prolonged pre-trial detentions, often lacking compelling legal justification, constitute a clear violation of both Armenian law and international human rights standards,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Among those detained are two senior clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, parliamentarians, and businesspeople. Oskanian claims the arrests reflect “a deliberate and systematic campaign of political repression” and warns that Armenia’s judiciary is being used to silence critics of the government led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The appeal comes amid growing international attention to the case of Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, a prominent critic of Pashinyan and supporter of the Church. Karapetyan was arrested in June after voicing opposition to the prime minister’s calls for the resignation of Catholicos Karekin II, the Church’s spiritual leader. His arrest was quickly followed by the government's announcement that it would nationalize Karapetyan’s Electricity Networks of Armenia (ENA), sparking concerns about political retribution and prompting warnings of potential international arbitration claims.
In a social media post that triggered condemnation from the Church, Pashinyan called for a public rally in Etchmiadzin, the Church’s headquarters, and accused the Catholicos of violating his clerical vows.
In his letter, Oskanian urges foreign embassies in Yerevan to issue joint statements and condition democratic assistance on tangible progress in areas such as judicial independence, due process, and political pluralism. “Continued public praise for Armenia’s so-called ‘democratic resilience’ now risks enabling further repression,” he warned.
Oskanian, who served as foreign minister from 1998 to 2008, framed his appeal as a last call to prevent the loss of Armenia’s democratic promise “for an entire generation.”
His open letter follows a sharply worded opinion piece published late last month, in which he accused the European Union and Western diplomats of “willful inaction, diplomatic hedging, and strategic cynicism” in the face of Armenia’s democratic backsliding.
“Today, all of these institutions—judiciary, police, press, and civil society—are being weaponized by Nikol Pashinyan’s government, transformed from pillars of democracy into tools of repression,” Oskanian wrote in the July op-ed published on CivilNet.
He warned that the EU’s muted stance is not neutrality but complicity: “Silence is not neutrality; it is complicity. If the EU continues to reward repression with engagement, it will forfeit not only its moral authority in Armenia, but its strategic relevance in the region as well.”
In one of his starkest assessments, Oskanian argued that Armenia is losing more than territory or security—it is losing its soul. “Now, the country is losing its democracy—crushed under the weight of a paranoid, vengeful administration more focused on silencing dissent than defending the state.”
Stories
