By Susan Badalian, Gayane Saribekian and Shoghik Galstian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan defended on Wednesday, May 29, police officers who tried to physically stop Catholicos Karekin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, from visiting a key national memorial on Tuesday.
Karekin and senior clergymen accompanying him had to break through three police cordons to lay flowers and pray at the Sardarapat memorial on the 106th anniversary of the proclamation of the first independent Armenian republic. Pashinyan led an official ceremony there 30 minutes later, at around 3 p.m.
The ceremony was scheduled to take place in the morning. Pashinyan was thought to have canceled it after hundreds of anti-government protesters led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan gathered at the memorial late on Monday and spent the night there. But the premier unexpectedly arrived at Sardarapat in the afternoon.
The unprecedented police actions were strongly condemned by the church’s Echmiadzin-based Mother See and Diaspora dioceses as well as opposition leaders and other critics of the Armenian government.
Pashinyan claimed that police officials at the scene “tried to clarify whether His Holiness has come to continue disruptive and provocative actions, initiated by his political supporters and the [protest] movement led by him, or for another purpose.” He said they let Karekin through after receiving assurances that Karekin’s visit to Sardarapat “only has a ceremonial purpose.”
