The Arrest Of Pastor Who Plans To Overthrow The Picu Government Of Clashes In Armenia

JAKARTA - A new order to arrest a senior pastor on charges of planning a government overthrow sparked clashes outside Armenia's most famous church on Friday.

Videos posted on the Armenian news site showed security forces pushing each other with crowds outside the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church near Yerevan, the capital, as they tried to detain Archbishop Mikael Ajapayan.

The officers withdrew from the area outside the cathedral in Etchmiadzin. The report said the bishop agreed to discuss the allegations with representatives of the Armenian Investigative Committee.

Reported by Reuters on Saturday, June 28, the court will decide whether to detain Ajapayan. Riots erupted two days after another prominent cleric, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, was detained, the last stage in an increasingly fierce confrontation between the church and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his government.

Galstanyan faces charges, along with 13 others, for planning to overthrow the government. The two priests denied wrongdoing.

The Armenian Church denounced the street confrontation, saying that day "will remain in the modern history of our people as a day of national disgrace because of the embarrassing actions of the Armenian authorities against the Armenian church".

Pashinyan, who will face next year's general election, said this week the authorities had thwarted a grand and malicious plot by the 'criminal-oligarkey convict' to take power in Armenia, a former Soviet republic in the South Case.

Several senior clerics have previously called for Pashinyan to step down over Armenia's military defeat to Azerbaijan after decades of hostilities.

Pashinyan rose to power through a wave of street protests in 2018, but came under intense domestic pressure following a major defeat to the second major conflict with Azerbaijan in 2020.

In 2023, Azerbaijan reclaimed the entire mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenia has enjoyed de facto independence for decades.