YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—A leader of France’s influential Armenian community critical of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed on Thursday that Armenia’s government lifted last year an entry ban imposed on him thanks to intervention from French President Emmanuel Macron.
Mourad Papazian, a co-chairman of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF), was detained at Yerevan airport and deported back to Paris in July 2022.
The Armenian government said afterwards that Papazian was denied entry to the country because of organizing an angry demonstration against Pashinyan’s June 2021 visit to France. It said the French-Armenian protesters threw “various objects” at Pashinyan’s motorcade when it drove through Paris.
Papazian denied any involvement in that protest before challenging the ban in an Armenian court of first instance. The court overturned it in January 2024.
Papazian, who is a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau, said that Macron arranged for him to discuss the matter with Pashinyan during an official dinner at the presidential Elysee Palace in February 2024.
“In front of the French president, the Armenian prime minister admitted that it was he who decided [to impose the ban] because I organized the demonstration,” Papazian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in Yerevan.
“Macron told him, ‘Now that Mourad has won the court case don’t appeal [against the ruling,]” he said. “Pashinyan cut short the conversation, he seemed upset. Macron then told me, ‘Stay put, I’ll go and talk to him.”
Papazian said that moments later Pashinyan told him that Armenia’s National Security Service has been ordered not to appeal against the ruling.
The French-Armenian leader was allowed to visit Armenia later in 2024. He again arrived in the country this week to attend the ARF World congress in Yerevan. Pashinyan’s office did not immediately confirm or deny his claims about Macron’s intervention.
In 2022 and 2023, the authorities in Yerevan also banned at least four other European members of the ARF from visiting Armenia. The ARF, which is a key member of Armenia’s main opposition alliance, strongly condemned the bans and accused Pashinyan of seeking to silence his vocal critics in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora.
