Christians ‘face persecution’ within the first Christian nation | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Religious freedom is below extreme assault on this planet’s oldest Christian nation, in response to a significant new report on looming civil strife in Armenia. It accuses the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, of launching a ferocious assault on the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church.

He has sought to overthrow its chief Catholicos Karekin II and has jailed its main clerics and parishioners with one archbishop, Mikayel Ajapahyan, serving a two-year sentence for criticising the federal government. Lord Jackson of Peterborough, vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Freedom, stated: “The idea of committed Christians in the world’s oldest Christian country, and in civilised and modern Europe, thrown into jail for defending their faith is frightening.

“Christian denominations in Armenia should be able to retain the right to congregate and worship in peace without the threat of violent intimidation and imprisonment or worse.

“The world is watching for human rights abuses committed against these embattled Christian communities.”

Armenia is historically thought to be the primary nation to undertake Christianity as its official faith, with many historians courting the choice to 301 or 314 AD.

An in depth report from the worldwide regulation agency Amsterdam & Partners accuses Pashinyan of performing like a dictator in his bid to cling to energy in elections subsequent 12 months.

It factors out that whereas Pashinyan’s recognition has plummeted in recent times, the Church continues to get pleasure from huge fashionable help with 97.5 per cent of the three million inhabitants of Armenia claiming membership.

The report says: “To explicitly target high ranking members of a national church, and its supporters, with vexatious, ill-founded and politically motivated prosecutions to silence criticism and exert control, is an act of an unpopular and politically inept regime, clinging to power through whatever means necessary.”

The conflict between Church and State in Armenia has its origins in Armenia’s defeat in 2023 within the warfare with Azerbaijan over the Armenian Christian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. This led to ethnic cleaning of the area with over 100,000 Armenians being compelled to flee to security.