As Canada plans to send election observers to Armenia, advocates warn of democratic backsliding

As the federal government prepares to send election observers to Armenia, an advocacy group including the former president of Human Rights Watch is warning Canada and its Western allies of a democratic backsliding ahead of the June vote.

“We have found disturbing trends in the current government [of Armenia] trying to suppress the views of the opposition and actually undermine some of the independent institutions that may have served as a check on the excesses of the administration,” said Kenneth Roth of the International Observatory for Democracy in Armenia (IODA), which conducted a fact-finding mission in Yerevan in March.

IODA also wrote letters to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Global Affairs Canada focusing on its findings, the group said.

Canada is looking to hire seven independent election observers to send to Armenia ahead of its parliamentary elections next month, the Privy Council Office said in a statement to CBC News. They will be part of a larger mission commissioned by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

This move comes after Carney visited Yerevan during the European Political Community (EPC) conference last week.

The EPC, a body made up of 27 European Union member states and other EU member states, was the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Carney was the first non-European leader to be invited to the event. He spent about 30 hours on the ground in Yerevan meeting mainly with EU leaders, but also with his Armenian counterpart, Nikol Pashinyan.

“Our histories are deeply intertwined,” Carney said in the conference’s opening remarks, noting the tens of millions of Canadians with European roots, “including more than 60,000 Armenians.”

He noted shared values, citing freedom, rule of law, democracy and pluralism, and highlighted Canada’s role as “the only non-European participant in the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA).”

The EUMA is a civilian force created to guard the border between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan, after two major wars in the past three decades between the two were in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Recognized under international law as part of Azerbaijan, but historically populated by ethnic Armenians, the conflict ended with the victory of Baku and the number of Karabakh Armenians fleeing to Armenia in 2023.

Pivot to the West is the theme of the main campaign

“It’s as if … Western governments, including Canada, have basically decided that for geopolitical purposes it doesn’t matter if there is democracy in Armenia,” Roth said. “As long as the government you come from is on the Western side.”

IODA, which includes former Liberal MP Bryan May to its manager and former Alberta premier Jason Kenney in it advisory boardwarned in March “we [Armenian] government interference in the independence of the judiciary and religious organizations, and the political persecution of those who appear to oppose politics, including political leaders, media officials, lawyers and members of the clergy.”

Among those arrested is Pashinyan’s staunch political opponent, Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian business tycoon who is under house arrest, as well as several members of the clergy. including Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyana Canadian citizen who spent ten years in Montreal as archbishop of the Armenian diocese of Canada.

Many of Pashinyan’s opponents have criticized his pivot away from Russia, Armenia’s traditional ally, and what they see as too many concessions by the Armenian government in its quest for peace with Azerbaijan.

Galstanyan and many others are facing charges of trying to overthrow Pashinyan.

Carney did not publicly mention Galstanyan’s arrest during his visit to Yerevan, and it is unclear whether he raised it when he met privately with Pashinyan.

A spokesperson for the Privy Council Office told CBC News that “consular officials have provided assistance to the individual and are closely monitoring the case,” but said he could not disclose further details due to confidentiality considerations.

“Obviously there is a threat to discredit Russian information, but the idea of ​​using that threat to avoid criticism of the anti-democratic actions of the ruling party is basically a matter of trying to save democracy by defeating it,” said Roth.

“And that was a very successful strategy for Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan because it silenced critics from the West and the European Union.”

The first election since he lost Nagorno-Karabakh

A set of issues about which Western countries including Canada spoke more than Pashinyan about the outbreak of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The European Parliament passed a resolution days before the EPC conference, asking Baku to release Armenian prisoners of war, refugees from the enclave to have the right to return under security guarantees, and accountability for the destruction of Armenian cultural and religious heritage.

The decision also came days after Azerbaijan destroyed two churches in the former capital of Karabakh, known as Khankendi in Azerbaijani and Stepanakert in Armenian.

In a statement, Azerbaijan’s religious authority, the Caucasus Muslims Board, defended the move, saying the buildings were “illegally built in Khankendi during the seizure of Azerbaijani lands.”

Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Yerevan, Carney pointed to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev’s active participation in the EPC summit as “an important sign of commitment” to the peace process.

“But it’s a process, and in any peace process there’s always a series of issues, important issues, important issues, humanitarian issues that need to be addressed over time,” Carney said.

He also pointed out how Pashinyan did not address the issue of destroyed churches during the conference.

“I think this is, probably for Armenia, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, one of the most sensitive elections,” said Jack Sullens, a lawyer who teaches electoral law at the University of Windsor, and has observed many elections as a Canadian member of the OSCE in Eastern European countries.

He said it was the first election in Armenia since Azerbaijan retook Nagorno-Karabakh, where he visited in 2010 to observe parliamentary elections in the then-unrecognized republic of Armenia.

Sullens said the role of observers sent by Canada and other countries will be important, not just on voting day.

“It’s things like campaign registration and candidate registration. These are the important parts, are you really running a real election, a real transparent election?”