I Am Deprived of My Legal Right to Attend Services of the Armenian Apostolic Church: Vardan Ghukasyan

Lawyer Zaruhy Postanjyan has published the complaint of Vardan Ghukasyan, the Mayor of Gyumri, who is currently in detention, addressed to the Human Rights Defender of Armenia, the Prosecutor General, and the ambassadors accredited in Armenia.

“To the Prosecutor General of Armenia, the Human Rights Defender of Armenia, the ambassadors accredited in Armenia,
Complaint
Since October 21, 2025, when the ruling authorities fulfilled their criminal dream by restricting my freedom with fabricated charges, I have also been deprived of my legal and fundamental right to participate in the services and liturgies of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is guaranteed by Article 41 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, as well as Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The limitation of my fundamental right is applied without any legal and justified reason, arbitrarily violating my right to exercise it both individually and together with others, publicly or privately, depriving me of the opportunity to participate in services and communal prayers with other believers.

The Armenian Apostolic Church is my spiritual parent, to which I have owed and continue to owe my debts by building churches, printing spiritual books in thousands of copies, and presenting donations to all churches in Armenia. As a devoted member of our Holy Armenian Apostolic Church, who spends 250 days of the year in fasting and prayer, the act of receiving communion in our church, kissing the Cross and the Gospel is not a common part of a ritual, but the duty of a servant of the Holy Trinity and the Enlightened Church, and I am purposefully deprived of participating in even a single Sunday liturgy.

The enforcers of the current authorities and prison guards have also imprisoned faith by preventing me from exercising my rights. The Christ-loving democrats have even prohibited me from smelling incense in my cell, and have not created conditions for me to pray alone or aloud. They have forbidden me to touch the walls of my Mother, the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church.

How afraid are the leadership with a heart of Judas of free-minded, dedicated countrymen like us, that they even prohibit our constitutional right to go to church from prison? I appeal to the diplomats of democratic European countries working in Armenia: you breathe in the fragrant air of my country, you drink the pure water of my homeland, some of you are bearers of the Christian faith and bow before the Cross and the Gospel. If any authority attempts to imprison your faith in the testimonies of Christ, the Cross, and the Holy Trinity, and does so under false declarations of ensuring religious freedoms, what will your attitude be towards the leader of that country?

As John the Theologian of Yerjanq says, “For whoever does not diminish the light of your Orthodox faith, who does not mix the good seed of your good wheat, who does not muddy the clear source of your tradition with the polluted water of foreign knowledge, who has poured vinegar of division into your bread of life,” I am confident that I will soon be able to exercise my right to participate in holy liturgies and united prayers.