Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, addressing the PACE plenary session today in Strasbourg, referred to a recent ECHR resolution declaring that Armenia violated the rights of politicians who were arrested by the government following the March 2008 post-election protests in Yerevan.

Pashinyan recalled that he had been arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison in the government crackdown of opposition figures and that he was released in 2011 thanks to the persistence of the Council of Europe, PACE, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

“The speeches and resolutions adopted in PACE gave hope and strength to us, those fighting for democracy in Armenia. I will never forget the day when the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe visited me in prison,” Pashinyan said, adding that “the Council of Europe and the PACE are accepted and perceived as guardians and defenders of democracy and human rights.”

Pashinyan boasted that since he came to power in Armenia in 2018 because of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ all elections have been free and fair.

“But this does not mean that electoral democracy in our country does not have problems. The practice of voter bribery continues to be used by some forces in Armenia,” Pashinyan said.

He claimed that most of the media in Armenia is controlled by forces ousted from power in 2018 and now present themselves as the political opposition.

Pashinyan accused the opposition media of spreading disinformation to save the wealth the illegally accumulated while in power from the government’s attempts to confiscate their ill-gotten gains.

Pashinyan said some of the opposition forces receive money from “like-minded foreign sources.” He didn’t name those sources.

See full speech HERE.