Long Live Pashinyan’s Democracy! Cramming the Jails with Facebook Critics — By Harut Sassounian

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is totally intolerant of anyone who disagrees with him, even though he repeatedly portrays himself as a staunch defender of democracy.

In addition to violating hundreds of laws, including numerous provisions of the Constitution, Pashinyan has directed security officers to arrest those who criticize him on Facebook. Foreigners who post similar comments from overseas may be placed on the government’s blacklist, and barred from entering Armenia, or arrested upon arrival.

This is what happened to Anush Hadjyan, who lives in the Los Angeles area. She is a citizen of the United States, not Armenia. On April 24, 2025, Anush shared someone else’s message criticizing Pashinyan on her Facebook page and added a few words of her own: “Finish off the Turkish puppet of the Nikol clan.”

Anush’s harsh words were an emotional outburst in reaction to Pashinyan’s questioning of the facts of the Armenian Genocide. However, it is much more reprehensible for the prime minister himself to use such vile and violent language against his political opponents. Yet no judge in Armenia dares to hold him accountable for his own transgressions.

More than a year later, on June 13, 2026, Anush was detained at Yerevan airport without explanation after traveling to Armenia. She was taken to a police station in the city and held there for eight hours before being released pending trial. In the meantime, she was prohibited from leaving the country.

As a U.S. citizen, Anush contacted the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan for assistance. An embassy employee said all she could offer was a list of local attorneys. In my view, the employee failed to provide adequate help. The embassy should have checked on Anush’s welfare and sought to ensure that her rights as a U.S. citizen were protected.

Anush hired a local attorney on her own and appeared in court almost two months later. She was pressured to admit guilt for her 2025 Facebook post, and her attorney advised her to comply. She was fined the equivalent of $2,000 and also paid thousands of dollars in attorney fees.

Anush paid the fine the same day, received a receipt, and was told she was now free to travel. However, when she attempted to drive to Georgia, she was stopped by Armenia’s border guards and prevented from proceeding, even after showing her court-issued release certificate. After two hours of detention at a local police station, she was finally allowed to cross into Georgia.

What is truly astonishing is that government officials appear to monitor the Facebook pages of countless Armenians, in Armenia and throughout the Diaspora, searching for comments critical of Pashinyan in order to prosecute those who post them. One would think the government has more urgent matters to deal with than monitoring people’s Facebook pages.

Anush is fortunate not to have been jailed. Many others have been arrested over Facebook posts. Here are some examples:

Artur Danielyan, a well-known Pashinyan critic, was arrested last week, just hours after calling him “scum” on Facebook.

Playwright Vahram Sahakyan was arrested on September 29 on charges of inciting “hatred, intolerance and hostility” over a Facebook post he published in January 2025. He was placed under administrative supervision and released on the condition that he refrain from posting on Facebook.

Artak Avetisyan was acquitted last month after being arrested in May. The initial “hate speech” allegation was later replaced with a charge of serious “hooliganism.” He had lashed out at Pashinyan on Facebook during the parliamentary election campaign.

In February, another critic was arrested and charged with hooliganism, two months after posting an offensive video about Pashinyan on TikTok. Around the same time, a 55-year-old woman from Akhuryan was prosecuted for reportedly making disparaging remarks about the prime minister and his family in a private online message.

Armenian lawyer Aleksandr Kochubayev was detained in 2025 after publishing a social media post criticizing law enforcement and judicial officials. Gayane Mesropyan from Artsakh was arrested in March 2026 over a Facebook post criticizing Pashinyan. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 posts containing vile comments directed at Artsakh Armenians went uninvestigated by the authorities.

On October 1, outspoken Armenian opposition parliamentarian Edgar Ghazaryan received a suspended two-year prison sentence for strongly criticizing a Constitutional Court ruling issued two years earlier. A Yerevan court convicted him of spreading “defamatory information” about the justices. His sister, Lilit Ghazaryan, was forced by her boss to resign after 22 years as deputy head of the government’s drug regulatory agency.

Even academics have lost their jobs for criticizing Pashinyan. Ruben Melikyan, a prominent pro-opposition lawyer who had taught law for 23 years at Yerevan State University (YSU), was fired in July. Two other YSU lecturers who supported the opposition, Alen Ghulyan and Shushan Vardanyan, were also dismissed that month.

However, Pashinyan’s supporters enjoy protection from prosecution. Earlier this year, one man told the media that Catholicos Karekin II should be “hit on the head with a stone and killed.” No charges were filed against him.

In 2023, then-Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan spat in the face of a Canadian-Armenian critic in Yerevan. Yet, the police detained the victim, not Simonyan.

Artur Papyan, the chairman of the Yerevan Press Club, accused the Armenian authorities of a “coordinated effort to intimidate the public and silence dissent.” He also condemned the fact that “overt threats and hate speech directed at oppositionists go completely unpunished.”