Years ago, back in 2004 during Robert Kocharyan’s presidency, the authorities were displeased with the speeches delivered at PACE by opposition MPs Artashes Geghamyan and Shavarsh Kocharyan. They were so displeased that pro-government activists showed up at Zvartnots Airport with placards, chanting “traitors” at the returning deputies. Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian also scolded the opposition for “airing our dirty laundry” in front of outsiders.
Geghamyan and Kocharyan’s criticism was well-founded and focused on the state of democracy in Armenia. The question is: has anything fundamentally changed in the past 21 years? In my view, no. The police still crack protesters’ heads just as before. Public TV (H1) remains what it always was—a propaganda tool for the authorities. The courts still obey political orders coming from the very top. And the government still has its “pet oligarchs”—some old, some new.
To this, we can add today’s practices: being fired from your job for a Facebook post, or getting a severe reprimand for simply sharing one. These are new only in the sense that Facebook didn’t exist back in Kocharyan’s day.
But one crucial thing has changed: the Council of Europe and other institutions now turn a blind eye to all this. The latest proof came when PACE delegates recently had the chance to question Armenia’s Prime Minister. None of them asked why, in our supposedly “exemplary democracy,” there are still political prisoners. Had such a question been raised, Pashinyan would have replied that those people are not political prisoners, and that he personally has nothing to do with their imprisonment—exactly the line Armenian authorities have used for decades. But the very absence of such a question speaks volumes about European attitudes.
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…Back when he was an opposition editor, Pashinyan used to call such European envoys “Euro-fodder” (a mocking Armenian expression, literally meaning alfalfa or animal feed) for ignoring blatant human rights abuses in Armenia. I believe that description has not lost its relevance.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
