Pashinyan’s Visit to Yerevan Church Followed by Arrests

Vartuhi Elbakyan, a lawyer representing the brothers, insisted that they did not commit any crimes when she spoke to reporters outside the Interior Ministry building in Yerevan picketed by their classmates and the latter’s parents demanding their release.

“The boys go to Mass every Sunday,” she said. “They are very pious.”

Elbakyan also insisted that the Miansyans “have no connection” to the third detainee, opposition activist Gevorg Gevorgian. The latter stood next to them during the incident.

Pashinyan’s loyalists blamed it on Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church whom Pashinyan has been controversially trying to depose. The chief of the prime minister’s staff, Arayik Harutiunian, accused Garegin of turning the church into a political “sect.” Opposition figures countered that the incident was the result of what they saw as Pashinyan’s provocative behavior.

Pashinyan has spent the last few weekends touring various parts of Armenia and talking to people in the streets on what look like campaign trips connected with the June 7 parliamentary elections. Some of those citizens caused him to lose his temper by openly denouncing his policies or complaining about his government’s track record.

In the most scandalous of those incidents caught on camera, Pashinyan raged at a female refugee from Nagorno-Karabakh who blamed him for Azerbaijan’s recapture of the region that forced its ethnic Armenian population to flee to Armenia. The premier branded the Karabakh Armenians as “fugitives” and said they have no moral right to denounce him, sparking a storm of criticism from not only his detractors but even some sympathizers. He later apologized for his outburst.