Hunger Strike, Day 5. The Government of Blackmail and the Armenian Apostolic Church. Political Prisoner Narek Samsonyan

Over the last few days, various priests have declared their support for the anti-church treason of “Nikol Kchoyan.” And while the number of joining traitors is very small, it is nonetheless repulsive to watch priests acting against their own essence. Among the ranks of these priests are some who, according to information circulating in the press, were lavishing the regime’s ringleader and the traitorous bishops with the vilest insults right up until the moment they wrote their “letters of capitulation.”

Information has also been circulating in the press that the NSS (National Security Service) and the police—which have transformed into the Gestapo of the Third Reich in recent days—are paying various visits to the priests of the traitorous dioceses and forcing them, through blackmail, to write these “letters of capitulation.” I am certain that it is obvious even to the brain of the most average Nikol supporter that this cheap masquerade is being conducted exclusively through blackmail (threats). Moreover, the representatives of the regime’s higher echelons know from their own experience what this blackmail means, as the regime’s Gestapo possesses stacks of kompromat on each of them and periodically uses it against them.

Generally speaking, the entire conscious life of the regime’s ringleader has been spent advancing his affairs precisely through blackmail. When he was a newspaper editor, we all read and knew numerous famous stories about how he earned money through blackmail. When he had just become Prime Minister, he chose the same path, and today the ringleader of the regime has brought the institution of blackmail to perfection. Blackmail has become one of the defining features of the regime, the system’s most effective and, at the same time, most criminal tool. Through blackmail, the regime’s Gestapo forces judges to commit crimes, forces the “Kchoyans” into treason against the Lord, and forces minister-deputies to stay and become accomplices to what is happening, and so on.

However, if the regime’s Gestapo blackmail works effectively in the case of judges, prosecutors, and other links of the state apparatus, in the case of the Armenian Apostolic Church, it can be considered an outright failure. The Church is the only institution that, under the leadership of the Catholicos of All Armenians, resists and outright smashes the toolkit of blackmail. The regime’s blackmail works only in the case of those who have betrayed church canons, and the sooner such people are purged from the Church, the better for all of us believers. Now we are all witnessing the aforementioned fact, and I do not have even one percent of doubt that the Church, led by the Catholicos of All Armenians, will ultimately smash the Gestapo’s toolkit, and the result will be a Church “de-Kchoyan-ized,” with its eternal mission.

God protect the Catholicos of All Armenians and the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church.

P.S. It is the 5th day of my hunger strike, and my preliminary demand is to be immediately released from illegal imprisonment.

Political Prisoner Narek Samsonyan
61st day of detention
“Armavir” Penitentiary, 13.01.2026