YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—An outspoken cleric leading Armenia’s latest protest movement vowed renewed efforts to remove Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan from power as he continued to tour Armenia’s regions this month.
Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who emerged as the leader of anti-government protests last spring when tens of thousands of Armenians took to the streets to oppose a controversial border demarcation deal with Azerbaijan, signaled that the movement needed to rethink its format after a violent police crackdown on its supporters in front of the parliament building on June 12.
Galstanyan, who has accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of making unilateral territorial concessions to Azerbaijan, calling for his resignation, has spent the past several weeks visiting different towns and villages across Armenia and holding meetings with his supporters.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service during one such visit in Armenia’s northwestern Shirak province on August 4 Galstanyan said that active anti-government campaigns pushing for Pashinyan’s resignation would resume in early September.
He did not disclose specific actions but mentioned that the second stage of the struggle would commence with an indoor meeting, rather than an outdoor public rally, where “ways to remove Pashinyan” would be discussed with supporters.
“What will the second stage of the struggle be? The anti-Christ must leave in a very good way,” Galstanyan said, referring to Pashinyan.
He added that the methods of the struggle would change as they had “drawn conclusions” from the government’s actions. “We have seen a bloodthirsty anti-Christ, a blood-craving government and have decided to change our tactics and methods so as not to give [the authorities] the pleasure of having that blood,” the archbishop emphasized without elaborating.
Galstanyan again countered claims that his anti-government movement had lost momentum or lacked unity regarding the issue of the prime minister’s resignation. He asserted that support for the movement had increased, with more people joining both inside and outside the country. “This is an ongoing struggle, an unceasing struggle,” he said, adding that the movement will continue “until I’m dead and the people of this struggle are extinct.”
