Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, as part of his campaign against the Armenian Apostolic Church, has issued yet another public accusation. According to him, Archbishop Yezras Nersisyan — the brother of Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II — is a KGB agent. He claims that Archbishop Yezras was recruited by the special services back in Soviet times. How substantiated are such claims, and what is really happening in our country? Levon Barseghyan, Chairman of the Board of the “Asparez” Club, shared his opinion.
“The burden of revealing whether someone was a KGB agent or not lies with the state authorities. After coming to power, Mr. Pashinyan was obliged to carry out lustration,” Barseghyan declared. He noted that systemic solutions are needed to strengthen the country’s security and weaken the influence of agent networks. According to the expert, a systemic solution means cleansing the system through lustration while simultaneously creating protective mechanisms to ensure protection against possible future agent influence. This process must apply to everyone, including law enforcement agencies.
However, Barseghyan continues, the government is pursuing a tactic of “putting out small fires”:
“The authorities do not adopt systemic solutions and leave everything to random adjustments. The mood sours (the prime minister’s, apparently), some cleric says something inappropriate, and on May 30 the prime minister comes out and, not directly but effectively, declares war on certain clergymen. But that is not a method, that is not an approach.”
According to the expert, the prime minister’s current behavior gives the impression of an ineffective manager:
“You have enormous resources, yet instead of using them, you perform from the position of a pundit-journalist? It’s incomprehensible — what’s the point?”
Instead of providing a systemic solution, the authorities have become obsessed with “the ethics of clergymen, their adherence to their own rules, and monitoring compliance.”
“Have all of Armenia’s problems been solved that we are now dealing with liturgies or the issue of clerical celibacy? Does the head of state of a country in our situation really have time to deal with the internal affairs of religious organizations? How can the number-one official of a state facing such complex challenges spend so much time on things like this?” Barseghyan emphasized.
He asserts that the issue of clerical celibacy interests very few people in Armenia. Barseghyan is convinced that there are far more important problems related to the AAC. In his view, state-church relations are not properly regulated.
“There is the well-known article of the Constitution and the Law on Relations between the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Republic of Armenia, which is a rather weak document. It does not regulate at all the constitutional principle of mutual non-interference in each other’s affairs. Any interference must entail some responsibility,” Barseghyan said.
According to him, the Code of Administrative Offenses and the Criminal Code must establish liability for violating this constitutional provision.
“Under the Code of Administrative Offenses, if a driver crosses a solid line, it is an administrative offense with a prescribed fine. Why can’t there be similar provisions regarding mutual non-interference between state and church? Then religious organizations would know their limits and face clear, legally prescribed responsibility for overstepping, and state and municipal officials would know their limits and face responsibility for interfering in the affairs of religious organizations,” Barseghyan said.
He also proposed stripping the AAC of a number of tax and customs privileges, considering such benefits unacceptable in a secular state:
“Since independence, the Armenian Apostolic Church has enjoyed numerous privileges — tax, customs, reporting to the State Revenue Committee, employee registration, fiscal accountability, and so on. This should not happen in a secular state. No one should have such privileged status.”