By Tigran Grigoryan and Hayk Khanumyan
Rcds.am. On May 14, during a meeting in one of Yerevan’s districts, former president and leader of the Armenia Alliance, Robert Kocharyan, criticized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s “attacks against national identity and the Church” and insulted the ruling party leader, saying: “Now tell me, you hambal (a derogatory Armenian term roughly meaning an uncultured brute or servant), what do you have against that? What compels you, why are your actions hurting an entire people?” This was followed by a campaign of insults directed at Kocharyan by Prime Minister Pashinyan and members of his team. However, the following days demonstrated that political opponents were not the only targets of such rhetoric.
Throughout the campaign period, Nikol Pashinyan has frequently insulted his critics, while also generating hostility toward them. One notable incident occurred on May 18, when the Prime Minister was campaigning in Yerevan’s Arabkir district. A physician, Arpine Soghoyan, approached him and accused him of mismanaging the war, causing thousands of deaths, and losing her homeland. Soghoyan also noted that her brother, a high-ranking military officer, remains missing in action. She further accused Pashinyan of destroying the state.
The criticism enraged Pashinyan. He associated the woman with opposition forces and began shouting at her, claiming that “you tried to make us kneel,” but that he would “but that he would ‘make Rob, Serzh, the Kaluga man, and Gago kneel and destroy them,” referring to former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, Prosperous Armenia Party leader Gagik Tsarukyan, and Strong Armenia Party leader Samvel Karapetyan.
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Responding to the woman’s accusation that he had destroyed the country, Pashinyan replied: “You destroyed it, you destroyed it, you looted through Karabakh.” However, the woman was not forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh; she had been a resident of that Yerevan neighborhood for decades.
Pashinyan also expressed anger that someone would speak to the Prime Minister in such a manner, saying: “Could you have spoken like that to even the deputy of the deputy of the deputy of a department head in Karabakh? They would have taken you away and killed you, they would have made you into Poghos Poghosyan…” — referring to Poghos Poghosyan, who was beaten to death in 2001 by a bodyguard of then-president Robert Kocharyan. The Prime Minister added that the sister of a missing soldier should be grateful she had not been killed in a restroom.
During the argument, Pashinyan also called Arpine Soghoyan “pitiful,” physically pulled the departing woman toward him, and continued shouting at her.
The Prime Minister, surrounded by bodyguards and using his position of authority, insulting a citizen, violating her physical integrity, grabbing and pulling a departing female citizen, and yelling at her amounted to a demonstrative use of power against a civilian, contradicting the most basic ethical standards expected from a public official.
This incident also represents yet another example of hate speech against refugees being spread at the highest political level, legitimizing stereotypes targeting them. Such behavior by senior state officials and actors associated with them has become systemic during the pre-election period, as documented in two reports published in recent months by the Regional Center for Democracy and Security (the March report and the April report).
The case of Artur Osipyan
The same day, Nikol Pashinyan generated hate speech toward Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians during another campaign meeting in the same district, when Nagorno-Karabakh political activist Artur Osipyan approached him. Osipyan accused Pashinyan of protecting former Nagorno-Karabakh presidents Bako Sahakyan and Arayik Harutyunyan. He stated that he had fought against corruption and abuses in Nagorno-Karabakh, while Pashinyan had defended corrupt officials and had even failed to react to alleged vote-buying by Arayik Harutyunyan during the 2020 elections.
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