Address by the Wife of Political Prisoner Narek Samsonyan to the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron

A video address has been released by the wife of political prisoner Narek Samsonyan, directed to the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron.

Mr. President Emmanuel Macron,

I address you as the wife of political prisoner Narek Samsonyan. This is the second time the Pashinyan regime has imprisoned my husband for opposition speech and criticism—speech that contained no profanity, even though, years ago, under Western pressure, grave insults were decriminalized in the Republic of Armenia.

Allow me now to continue in the language in which I can express myself freely.

My husband is the co-author and co-host of the famous political podcast “Imnemnimi,” which is broadcast on YouTube and has a growing audience. Now, a criminal case has been initiated against him under the article of “hooliganism.” This is because, during an episode of the podcast, my husband addressed the public insults made by members of the government and Civil Contract MPs against him and his co-host, Vazgen Saghatelyan. Specifically, while directing his response to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, he used the word “buttocks” . According to Armenian law enforcement, the word “buttocks,” uttered by my husband live on air in response to a filthy Facebook post containing profanity by the Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia, contained the corpus delicti of hooliganism.

The fact is that days before being imprisoned, my husband and Vazgen had hosted the third President of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, on the “Imnemnimi” podcast and held a frank and free 7-hour conversation with the third President live on air. By dawn, after the broadcast concluded, Nikol Pashinyan had made several agitated Facebook posts, joined by his teammates who wrote numerous insulting Facebook posts and comments using filthy vocabulary directed at the podcast hosts and the President. It was precisely at that time that the Speaker of the National Assembly, in his regular Facebook post, called my husband and Vazgen “sons of bitches” . He received an incomparably mild response involving the use of the word “buttocks” during the subsequent broadcast. For this, he appealed to law enforcement to initiate a criminal case against my husband and Vazgen.

The regime’s law enforcement, without thinking about the law or legality, undertook the duty of fabricating a criminal case. The next day, masked officers of the National Security Service’s ALPHA squad entered our house, searched it in front of me and our young daughters, twisted my husband’s arms using Pashinyan’s favorite methods, and detained him, even though he offered no resistance and was complying with all demands of the law enforcement officers.

At the same hour, the same scenario was unfolding at Vazgen Saghatelyan’s house, as well as at the office of the AntiFake news outlet. They groundlessly confiscated all equipment from the news outlet: all computers, all cameras, filming drones, microphones and recording devices, tripods, the office security camera DVR, batteries, memory cards, chargers, power banks, all necessary devices for live broadcasting, and the equipment and cables ensuring broadcast sound and audio clarity.

Depriving the news outlet of the equipment ensuring its operations had only one goal: to terminate the outlet’s activity and cause direct material damage.

All that equipment had been acquired thanks to sympathizers, and fortunately, supporters appeared again who, with their personal funds, provided the news outlet with the necessary equipment in a single day so that the outlet could continue its activities and the opposition voice could sound again.

It is clearer than clear that this is a means to silence opposition speech in the Republic of Armenia and to intimidate other opposition members with this example.

My husband and Vazgen have been illegally imprisoned since November 13 and are currently in the “Armavir” penitentiary. Their visits are banned, as if they have killed someone or handed the homeland over to the enemy for personal gain.

Following the work of media operating in France, seeing what uninhibited vocabulary is used in both political and entertainment programs, and seeing that profanity used in on-air speech—even directed at you—is not perceived as hooliganism and does not become a reason to send people to prison, I cannot understand how you shake Pashinyan’s hand while seeing clearly how he subjects his opponents to political persecution using repressive methods and wipes his feet on true justice.

International organizations have already recorded once that my husband and the co-host of the “Imnemnimi” podcast, Vazgen Saghatelyan, were subjected to imprisonment for criticizing the government and Nikol Pashinyan in their podcast. You can find this formulation in the 2024 reports of Freedom House and Amnesty International. The Freedom House report even published a link to the footage of my husband being brutally detained. The European Federation of Journalists also condemned the abuse of criminal legislation by the Armenian authorities to suppress freedom of the press and speech. Local organizations have also condemned this modus operandi of the authorities and demanded the immediate release of Narek and Vazgen. The International Center for the Development of Parliamentarism also prepared a report on the “Imnemnimi” case. The Armenian Center for Political Rights compiled a comprehensive report on the previous and current criminal prosecutions of Narek and Vazgen.

The criminal prosecutions initiated by the authorities against my husband and Vazgen are gross violations of human rights and the realization of free speech, and they are being persecuted illegally.

Proving what has been said is the fact that the Court of General Jurisdiction of the First Instance in the Republic of Armenia has already issued a verdict of acquittal once in a previous criminal case of identical content involving “Imnemnimi.”

I am appealing to you, and not to your country’s Ambassador Olivier Decottignies, because I am not confident that your Ambassador is politically neutral.

I am informing you so that you know whom you are protecting and what is happening in Armenia as a consequence of your protection.

I appeal to you with the expectation that, if possible, you tell Pashinyan that this modus operandi of his has nothing to do with democracy and leads to totalitarianism.

Do you think that for the sake of winning the struggle for hegemony between superpowers, it is worth closing your eyes to Pashinyan’s totalitarian tendencies and not seeing that he is not a bearer of democratic values, but a classic dictator whom one is only allowed to praise, while those who dare to criticize must be sent to prisons?

Unlike Gaddafi, Pashinyan has not killed demonstrators… yet.

Narek Samsonyan is a political prisoner in his own country who still romantically believes in true democracy and democratic values.