More pressure on church, more important its role - ex-official 

ArmInfo.  The more the Armenian authorities put pressure on the Armenian Apostolic Church in order to neutralize it, the more the role and importance of the AAC in the  public environment will grow. Former chief adviser to the RA Prime  Minister Arsen Gasparyan told journalists on June 25.

According to him, the confrontation between the Armenian authorities  and the Armenian Apostolic Church began in 2018, when the "New  Armenia, New Catholicos" movement was born. "There is nothing  surprising about this, similar cases have been observed in many other  countries. In particular, in Eastern European countries  (Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.) during the Cold War, the authorities  essentially put pressure on the Catholic Church and other religious  institutions. The same thing is happening in Cuba today. All these  events are united by one thing: attempts by governments and  authorities of the revolutionary left to take control of churches by  radical methods. Armenia is no exception in this list," Gasparyan  noted, while pointing out one difference: in the same Eastern Europe,  other totalitarian states, and even in Africa, no one used the same  vocabulary towards churches as is used in Armenia.

Responding to the connection between the attacks of the Armenian  authorities on the AAC with the statements of the head of the Muslims  of the Caucasus, Alahshukur Pashazade, towards the AAC, the expert  pointed to the results of the 2020 war, in which both Azerbaijan and  Turkey acted as a united front.  After military expansion, Gasparyan  continued, political expansion usually follows, a striking example of  which are Pashazade's statements.

"All actions of the Armenian authorities related to changes in the  Constitution, symbols of Armenian statehood, attacks on the AAC are  part of the political expansion by Baku and Ankara.  Turkey," said  the former adviser to the Prime Minister.

He also touched upon the current situation in the country amid  reports of an attempted coup d'etat. "There is no coup, this is  political persecution. Let those 600 thousand people who made their  choice in favor of the current leaders of the country think about  this persecution. When the latter declare the existence of freedom of  speech in Armenia, we must keep in mind that an increase in pensions  and a double increase in the salaries of workers in the educational  sector would be an achievement, but in this case we are dealing with  political persecution," Gasparyan emphasized.