During a Feb. 26 Capitol Hill briefing, human rights advocates urged the Trump administration to confront what they described as a worsening crackdown by Armenia’s government against the country’s historic Armenian Apostolic Church.
The briefing, organized by the National Defense Alliance, focused on actions taken under Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that speakers said target the church’s leadership. It came shortly after Vice President JD Vance’s February visit to Armenia, which was aimed in part at advancing U.S.-backed peace efforts between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
According to advocates, Pashinyan’s administration recently filed criminal charges against the church’s top leader, Catholicos Garegin II, and imposed a travel ban on him and six other bishops to prevent them from attending a global meeting of Armenian Apostolic Church leaders in Austria.
Armenian authorities have also jailed more than a dozen prominent clerics on what the speakers described as unsubstantiated charges, including terrorism, coup plotting, obstruction of justice, and drug-related offenses.
“The reality is that the government’s campaign against the Armenian Apostolic Church, which has been going on for well over a year, continues unabated to this day,” Alberto Fernandez, a former U.S. diplomat and the vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, said during the event.
Fernandez said Pashinyan’s policies amount to a “basic contradiction” of his stated intentions, since the prime minister claims to seek closer ties with the West but also takes actions that restrict religious freedom.
Religious liberty, Fernandez said, is closely tied to broader civil freedoms. “Regimes that don’t want to hear criticism from religious authorities tend also not to want to hear criticism from the media or from secular critics.”
According to Fernandez, Pashinyan’s “authoritarian policies” have resulted in “the erosion of the rule of law, a corrupted judiciary, a bloated and abusive prison system,” and the creation of a security apparatus that has “jailed clergy, businessmen, journalists, and any opposing politicians.”
Christian Solidarity International President John Eibner, who also spoke during the briefing, called on the Trump administration “to show strength and conviction by defending the Armenian Apostolic Church against this persecution, thereby enhancing the survival of the world’s first Christian nation.”
Eibner said that Pashinyan’s “new ideology calls for radical policies that weaken the fabric of the historic Armenian nation,” including his “acceptance” of Azerbaijan’s “ethno-religious cleansing” of Armenian Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh and “the political and legal closure of all issues related to this mass atrocity crime.”
As Zeale News previously reported, Armenia’s neighboring country, Azerbaijan, seized full control in 2023 of the Armenian Christian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which had operated as a self-governing entity since the early 1990s. The takeover prompted most of the roughly 120,000 Armenian residents to flee in what was widely condemned as an act of ethnic cleansing. Azerbaijan also detained dozens of Armenians. Advocates have repeatedly asked the Trump administration to press for the prisoners’ release.
Zeale News spoke Feb. 4 with David Vardanyan, whose father is among those detained. Vardanyan said Vance’s then-upcoming trip presented a “unique opportunity” for the Trump administration to demonstrate its commitment to defending Christians worldwide by advocating for the detainees’ release.