Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and members of his political team have faced such accusations ever since the 2023 exodus of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population resulting from an Azerbaijani military offensive. Their loyalists have attacked Karabakh Armenians for participating in anti-government demonstrations. Some of them have said such refugees must be denied government aid.
The activists, who officially do not represent Karabakh’s exiled leadership, say that the smear campaign intensified dramatically after they rallied thousands of refugees in Yerevan late last month to demand that the government stop discriminating against them, champion their right to safely return to their homeland on the international stage and keep up housing allowances paid to many of them.
Picketing the headquarters of Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General, they read out a list of members and supporters of the ruling Civil Contract party who have made what they see as hateful comments about Karabakh Armenians during and after the rally. They demanded criminal proceedings against such individuals.
The list includes Arsen Torosian, a former health minister who currently heads a standing committee of the Armenian parliament. In a Facebook post, Torosian alleged that the March 29 rally is part of a “fight against the existence of the Republic of Armenia.” For his part, a deputy chief of Pashinian’s staff described the disgruntled refugees as a “protest material” for the Armenian opposition.
“People at the helm of the regime sitting in the government building themselves spread hate speech,” one of the protesters declared outside the prosecutors’ building.
“There is a great deal of fear that this propagated hatred could go much further and … could one day lead us to fratricide,” said another speaker.
The campaign deplored by the protesters has also been strongly condemned by Armenian opposition leaders and prominent public figures critical of Pashinian.
The key demand of the March 29 rally was the restoration of monthly housing allowances that were paid to tens of thousands of Karabakh Armenians until this month. The government controversially decided late last year to largely scrap the scheme. Senior government officials have said that the decision will not be reconsidered despite the protests.
The protest organizers have responded by pledging more demonstrations. They have yet to schedule their next major rally in Yerevan.
The Karabakh activists have also voiced political demands. In particular, they want Yerevan to take “all possible legal, political and diplomatic steps to ensure the collective return of the people of Artsakh to their homeland.”
Pashinian’s government does not raise this issue in its peace talks with Azerbaijan or on multilateral international platforms. Pashinian has repeatedly indicated that the Karabakh issue is closed for his administration. He has lambasted Karabakh’s Yerevan-based leaders for continuing to present themselves as a government in exile and threatened to crack down on them.