Epress.am News from Armenia
The U.S. Department of State has published its annual International Religious Freedom Report, in which it states that according to minority religious groups and NGOs in Armenia, government rhetoric equating national identity to affiliation with the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) continued to fuel discrimination against religious organizations other than the AAC.
Read parts of the report below:
– On October 4, media reported a member of the Vanadzor City Council, Arkadi Peleshyan, entered the Vanadzor Evangelical Church with a group of his supporters on October 2 and severely beat the church’s pastor and President of the Union of Churches of Evangelical Faith of Armenia, Rafael Grigoryan. The Investigative Committee, an independent body responsible for conducting pretrial investigations, launched an investigation into whether Peleshyan should be formally charged with battery. According to public statements by Grigoryan, the assault was related to his refusal to allow the distribution of promotional materials for Pelehsyan’s political party during Sunday services. The website Protestant.am, a media initiative of Evangelical Christians, issued a statement on October 5 condemning the attack and stating it was caused by ‘the air of impunity, hate speech and intolerance spread by media toward Christians of evangelical faith.’ On November 8, the Investigative Committee suspended the case following a reconciliation between Grigoryan and Peleshyan after the latter made a public apology for the attack.
Some minority Christian groups reported they had the freedom to worship provided they did so discreetly and limited their activities to their own premises and community. They said attempting to expand beyond those premises or attempting to expand their existing membership through proselytizing could potentially create problems. For this reason, the groups said, they kept their activities low profile and exercised self-censorship.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses said they continued to pursue legal avenues for the protection of their rights and tried to maintain a dialogue with the government. They reported they received more police protection while engaging in their public ministry and discerned an improved attitude on the part of government authorities toward their members. Most religious groups, however, said they preferred to solve their issues off the record to avoid the possibility of further problems.
Evangelical Christian groups reported they had given up requesting permission for their pastors to visit prisoners, despite requests by prison inmates, because prison administrators had repeatedly denied them permission for such visits in the last several years.
According to several religious groups, representatives from local governments continued to obstruct their attempts to obtain approval of the required architectural planning studies and building and occupancy permits for houses of worship on land religious groups owned. Representatives of several minority faiths continued to report local authorities granted building permits for places of worship only after receiving informal approval from the leadership of the AAC. Some religious groups said they were more successful in obtaining building permits if they did so using the name of a private individual, or if the stated purpose in applying for the permit was to use the building for a purpose other than as a place of worship. Other groups reported rather than try to build new places of worship, they obtained existing buildings and renovated them for this purpose.
A Yezidi group reported local authorities in the village of Jrashen refused its request to build a monument to a Yezidi leader in the town square. According to the Yezidi group, while no written rejection was provided, the reason for the refusal was the possibility of constructing an AAC church in the same square at some time in the future and the AAC’s desire not to have a Yezidi monument with religious symbolism near an AAC church.
Human rights activists continued to express concern over the government’s integration of the AAC into the public education system and its granting of permission to the AAC to disseminate materials in schools with rhetoric equating AAC affiliation with the national identity.
According to various religious groups and NGOs that advocated for religious tolerance, government rhetoric equating national identity to affiliation with the AAC continued to fuel discrimination against religious organizations other than the AAC.
Religious groups affiliated with ethnic minorities, such as Apostolic Assyrians, continued to report better relations with government institutions than did other minority religious groups whose members included ethnic Armenians.
Read the report in full here.