Armenian Genocide Museum removes posts on Catholicos's visit amid leadership turmoil
Armenia’s Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI) deleted online posts about Catholicos Garegin II’s visit to the Tsitsernakabert memorial on Friday, taking them down without explanation just hours after they appeared. The move comes more than a month after the museum’s director resigned at the insistence of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church whom Pashinian has been controversially trying to depose, led a traditional prayer service at the hilltop memorial as Armenia marked the 111th anniversary of the 1915 genocide in Ottoman Turkey. The service followed a wreath-laying ceremony attended by Pashinian and other senior officials.
AGMI, which runs the memorial complex, had posted photographs and a short statement about the church leader’s visit on its website and social media before removing them several hours later. The deletion unfolded against the backdrop of turmoil at the institution.
In early March, AGMI Director Edita Gzoyan announced her resignation after Pashinian acknowledged forcing her to step down over what she told and gave U.S. President JD Vance during his February 10 visit to Tsitsernakabert. Gzoyan presented Vance with books on the 1915 genocide and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
Pashinian called her move a "provocative action" that he said ran counter to his policy toward Azerbaijan and Turkey. Opposition leaders and prominent public figures accused the prime minister of openly violating academic freedom.
Twenty-five genocide scholars based in the United States and Europe, in a joint March 12 statement, denounced what they called the "silencing of independent academic voices in favor of political convenience." "Dr. Gzoyan’s forced exit sends a chilling message to academics and historians everywhere: that rigorous inquiry and truthful remembrance can be displaced for diplomatic comfort," they said.
Gzoyan’s removal also roiled AGMI’s staff and board of trustees. The board’s chairman, French-Armenian genocide scholar Raymond Kevorkian, and several members resigned in protest and were swiftly replaced. Pashinian subsequently appointed one of his former aides, Hrachya Tashchian, a former diplomat with no scholarly experience, as AGMI’s acting director.
Tashchian insisted on Thursday that the sacking has not affected the institute’s activities. That assessment was challenged from within. Narine Margarian, AGMI’s research secretary, said some international cooperation programs have been thrown into uncertainty.
"Some of the events related to our international partners are frozen or in limbo at the moment," she said.
"There is concern that the best genocide scholars and specialists in the field, who have publicly said academic freedom is at risk here, will decide not to attend in these circumstances." She also voiced concern about a European Union–financed research project the institute has run for the past two years, saying there were "signals from the European side that perhaps it will not continue into the third year in the way it was designed to." With commemorations ongoing and partnerships in question, AGMI’s rapid deletion of posts and continuing leadership reshuffle highlight the mounting strain between government policy and the institute’s scholarly and memorial work.