Leading bishop among Armenian clerics arrested in government crackdown on church

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YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — A bishop in the influential Armenian Apostolic Church has been charged with coercing citizens into taking part in public gatherings in the latest in a series of arrests against critics of the country's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan is also accused of using his office to commit large-scale theft and obstruct electoral rights, Armenia’s Investigative Committee said Wednesday.

The Armenian Apostolic Church, whose leaders largely oppose Pashinyan, condemned the arrest as part of a systematic campaign against it. “There is obvious malicious intent to hinder the normal activities of the church,” it said on social media.

Twelve other clergymen from the same diocese were detained with Proshyan, the church said. It did not specify if they were still being held.

Police launched an investigation into Proshyan in September after a member of the clergy accused the church of pressuring its members to take part in anti-government rallies in 2021. He also accused unnamed senior clergy in Proshyan’s diocese of corruption and misconduct.

Proshyan’s arrest is the latest in a series of high-profile arrests against leading Armenian clergy in recent months as Pashinyan has sought to discredit his political opponents. Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan, who was arrested in June, has been sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of calling for an overthrow of the government.

Pashinyan has repeatedly called for the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II, to resign over accusations that he is a father, despite a vow of celibacy. Proshyan is Karekin II’s nephew.

Relations between Pashinyan and the church have deteriorated rapidly since April 2024, when tens of thousands of demonstrators called for his ouster after Armenia agreed to hand over control of several border villages to Azerbaijan and to normalize relations between its neighbors.

Many clergy, including those linked to the Sacred Struggle opposition group, have bitterly opposed the handover of the villages. Although the territorial concession was the movement’s core issue, it now includes numerous complaints against Pashinyan, who came to power amid a wave of hopeful, pro-democracy protests that swept Armenia in 2018.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in territorial disputes since the early 1990s, as various parts of the Soviet Union pressed for independence from Moscow. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, ethnic Armenian separatist forces backed by the Armenian military won control of Azerbaijan’s region of Karabakh and nearby territories.

In 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured broad swaths of territory in and around Karabakh. A lightning military campaign in September 2023 saw Azerbaijan fully reclaim control of the region. Armenia later handed over the border villages.

In August, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shook hands at a White House summit before signing a deal aimed at ending decades of conflict.