YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am) — An outspoken archbishop leading protests against the Armenian government’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan demanded that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resign as he rallied tens of thousands of supporters in Yerevan on Thursday, May 9.
Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan held what appeared to be the biggest antigovernment demonstration in Armenia in years five days after activists led by him began marching to the capital from Kirants, a village in the northern Tavush province that was the epicenter of the protests.
Kirants and three other Tavush villages are adjacent to border areas which Pashinyan’s government wants to cede to Azerbaijan in what it calls a demarcation of first section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Many local residents are strongly opposed to the handover, saying that it would isolate their communities and leave them vulnerable to Azerbaijani attacks.
Galstanyan, who leads the Tavush Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, again condemned “this illegal unilateral process” when he addressed the massive crowd that gathered in Yerevan’s central Republic Square.
“We have come here to demand answers from the head of Armenia’s government who repeatedly visited our communities and lied, misled, and then bullied and threatened people,” he said. “We have come to demand answers for those threats.”
The clergyman backed by the church went on to accuse Pashinyan’s administration of incompetence and misrule and blame it for Azerbaijan’s recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh.
