“All Armenian citizens have rights and we cannot take those away from anyone. If we begin to do so, it will get to the point that only the authorities, government, and Prime Minister have rights. The revolution happened so that everyone could have rights. Not only do I have rights, but everyone else does, too. Therefore, we need to find the right balance between my rights and the rights of everyone else based on the condition that we don’t want to give anyone rights through taking away someone else’s,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said while answering a question about the events following a transgender woman’s speech in parliament during a meeting with Armenians from Strasbourg and other communities.
One of the members of the community asked Pashinyan about how Vardan Ghukasyan went unpunished for stating that all members of the LGBT community need to be burned. “Should we start to burn everyone? Should we burn corrupt people too? Should we burn people who have rigged elections? I don’t think anyone should be burned. The death penalty does not exist in Armenia. We don’t even sentence murderers to death.”
Pashinyan said that sometimes, people simply try to make others angry. “Their goal is to make sure that the government takes punitive measures against freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and their rights. I will not take such measures because we live in a democracy.”
