We demand an immediate end to this criminal prosecution and the lifting of the ban on the Catholicos leaving the country

STATEMENT
On the Criminal Prosecution of His Holiness Karekin II
Catholicos of All Armenians
and the Escalating Attacks on Religious Freedom in Armenia
The hearing in the criminal case against His Holiness Karekin II Nersissian, Catholicos of All Armenians and spiritual leader of the world’s oldest national Church, and six senior clergymen has once again been postponed, while the Catholicos of All Armenians remains prohibited from leaving his own country. We demand an immediate end to this criminal prosecution and the lifting of the ban on the Catholicos leaving the country, so that he may visit his communities around the world and fully discharge his pontifical duties.
Our legal team is deeply concerned by the authorities’ use of state power to discredit, silence and strip the leader of the Church of his ecclesiastical status. For more than 1,700 years, the Church has been a pillar of Armenian identity and Christian faith. These actions demonstrate an effort to establish state control over the Church’s hierarchy.
The public attacks by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his political team target not only the Catholicos of All Armenians but also the system of self-governance of the Holy Armenian Apostolic Church. In our assessment, the removal of “History of the Armenian Church” from the curriculum, the removal of clergy from the armed forces and penitentiary institutions, attempts to alter the rite of the Holy and Immortal Divine Liturgy, the seizure of churches, plans to draw up a new Church charter and replace the Catholicos, and the prosecution of clergy in numerous criminal cases together constitute a wide-ranging campaign of pressure against the Church’s autonomy. The Church’s autonomy is protected by the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia and the European Convention on Human Rights. Its protection is also directly connected to the right of the faithful to practise their religion freely.
Government officials, led by Nikol Pashinyan, make accusations against the Church and the Catholicos of All Armenians through Facebook posts, parliamentary speeches and state media. The authorities also pursue their efforts to discredit the Church and the Catholicos in their dealings with other states and international institutions.
In the ongoing case concerning the Catholicos of All Armenians and six bishops, judicial recusals and the transfer of the case from one court to another are, in effect, prolonging the restriction on the Catholicos’s freedom of movement. The Catholicos of All Armenians is accused of an act that falls within his exclusive canonical authority. He defrocked a bishop, an act which the prosecution has characterised as obstructing the enforcement of a court order granting interim relief in a civil case. Moreover, the civil court order itself interferes with the Church’s internal affairs and autonomy, a form of interference that the European Court of Human Rights has deemed impermissible in various judgments. The legal team maintains that the criminal prosecution could not lawfully have been initiated and must now be discontinued while the case is still at the preliminary hearing stage before the court.
This situation deepens our concerns about ensuring a fair trial within a reasonable time.
Over seventeen centuries, the Holy Armenian Apostolic Church has withstood pressure from empires and survived the Armenian Genocide and Soviet persecution. Today, we are convinced that the Catholicos of All Armenians is being subjected to criminal prosecution in his own country for leading his Church and exercising his pontifical authority.
We are not asking the international community to take sides in Armenia’s domestic politics. We call on it to assess what is happening through the lens of religious freedom and the rule of law. In our assessment, this is a state campaign to establish control over an independent religious institution with communities around the world and to remove its leadership through the use of state power, intimidation and public humiliation, in violation of the Church’s right to self-governance.
This is an attack on religious freedom. The international community must consistently hold Armenia to the same human rights standards that it applies to any other state that has pledged to uphold European values.
We expect a clear public response and independent monitoring of the trial to safeguard religious freedom, the Church’s autonomy and fair trial guarantees.
Ara Zohrabyan, Attorney at Law