The Foreign Ministry of Armenia Should Declare Pashinyan a Persona Non Grata in Armenia
February 11, 2025. «Iravunk» Newspaper reports:
On June 12, 2014, at the opening of a National Assembly session, opposition parliamentarian Nikol Pashinyan launched into a tirade about what he claimed were insulting remarks made the previous day at the meeting of the Armenian-Russian Parliamentary Club.
“Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday something inadmissible took place in the Armenian Parliament. During the meeting of the Armenian-Russian Parliamentary Club, Russian journalist Dmitry Kisilev made statements in a disrespectful tone, with implications against Armenia, against the martyrs of the Armenian people, and against the Armenian language. I believe the Foreign Ministry of Armenia should address this issue and declare Dmitry Kisilev a persona non grata in the territory of Armenia.”
In response, parliamentarian Hayk Babukhanyan - who, unlike Nikol Pashinyan, had actually attended the meeting in question - stated that Nikol was a habitual liar and gossiper.
It is evident that Nikol, a Russophobe to the core, was simply looking for an opportunity to undermine Armenian-Russian relations and curry favor with the West.
Yet let us examine Nikol’s own logic: he claimed that anyone making “disrespectful statements against the martyrs of the Armenian people” should be declared a persona non grata in Armenia. This is one of the very rare ideas of his that we can agree with. By this standard, when Nikol Pashinyan declared that Artsakh is Azerbaijani land, he himself disrespected the tens of thousands of Armenian martyrs who fell defending Artsakh. According to this narrative, those martyrs did not die in a sacred struggle to protect their homeland, but were instead “aggressors.” This is nothing less than contempt for the martyrs of the Armenian people.
Furthermore, Nikol Pashinyan’s statements suggesting that the fact of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in Western Armenia in 1915–1923 should be “revised” constitute disrespect toward the 3 million victims of the Armenian people.
Thus, in 2022–2025, Nikol Pashinyan repeatedly displayed disrespect toward the martyrs of the Armenian people. Therefore, according to his own 2014 statement, Nikol Pashinyan should himself be declared a persona non grata in the territory of Armenia. It calls to mind the well-known film: “Nikol vs. Nikol.”
Nevertheless, this would be the mildest - and perhaps the most desirable - outcome for Nikol Pashinyan, because under the Criminal Code, he should in fact bear criminal responsibility.
A. Hovhannisyan
