Warning: This is a rush transcript generated automatically and may contain errors.
Asbed Bedrossian: everyone. We have Harut Sassounian with us for this Conversations on Groong episode. He is a community leader, publisher of the California Courier newspaper, and president of the Armenia Artsakh Fund, which has provided nearly a billion dollars of humanitarian aid to Artsakh and Armenia in the last two, three decades. Mr.
Sassounian, thanks for joining us.
Harut Sassounian: My pleasure.
Harut Sassounian: Thank you for your invitation.
Hovik Manucharyan: Hi, Mr. Sassounian. Looking forward to an interesting conversation.
Harut Sassounian: Thank you, Hovik.
Asbed Bedrossian: well let me start with our first topic which has to do with this church and state debacle going on in Armenia. While Pashinyan’s conflict with the Armenian Apostolic Church predates 2025, the present phase of this government’s attack on the church and the Catholicos, Garegin II, sharpened around May 2025, when the World Council of Churches conference in Bern, Switzerland, happened, and Garegin II pressed issues including Artsakh’s displaced population, Armenian heritage, and the right of return of the Artsakhtsis.
And this conflict moved very quickly into public allegations against senior clergy, challenges of Garegin II’s legitimacy, and calls for new church leadership. Within two days, because I believe that Garegin II spoke on May Within just two days, Pashinyan was posting an escalating set of attacks, slanderous posts on social media aimed at senior clergy, including vulgar sexual language, questions about bishops’ compliance with celibacy, and the claim that the Armenian state should have a decisive vote in selecting the Catholicos. It was Hetq.am that counted over 18 such posts in 11 days.
Asbed Bedrossian: Harut, what happened here? What changed in this phase of the church-state conflict after Bern?
Harut Sassounian: Okay, without going long back into history, let me just say that the conflict started more vigorously a few years ago. After the 2020 war, Catholicos Garegin II, issued a statement asking for Pashinyan’s resignation.
So did Aram Catholicos, so did the Ramgavar Party, so did the ARF, etc., even AGBU. did that so obviously that wasn’t a good idea and it didn’t rub well with with the prime minister so then then from there we’ll let’s move on quickly into banning the religious education from public schools by pashinyan then he banned the clergy in the military and then he banned clergy from Armenian prisons and then we come to where you started from the World Council of Churches conference in Bern and then Pashinyan started attacking saying that he should be removed, replaced, etc. Government must have a say in the Mother See.
All of this, let me start by saying, is anti-constitutional because the constitution says church and state separation of church and state. So everything Pashinyan has written and said until today is illegal by law. And then things, then he keeps referring to Catholicos having a child, which again is not government business. It’s a religious issue.
It’s an internal issue. And then what happened, what really got things going out of control, the Catholicos dismissed a bishop for not following the H.E. Minas in guidance and the bishop was siding with Pashinyan so Pashinyan filed a lawsuit in court through his people to sue the Catholicos and to force him to return the bishop back to the ranks of the clergy.
Asbed Bedrossian: On what legal basis?
Harut Sassounian: There’s no legal basis. The courts have no business dealing with this issue. The prime minister has no business dealing with this issue. It’s illegal.
It’s against the Constitution. But for whatever reason, because the judge, as Pashinyan said, there’s no judge who will not follow my guidance. accepted the lawsuit and filed a charge against the Catholicos. And Catholicos and six bishops in the conclave, they refused to obey the order of the court. And they dismissed the bishop.
They reconfirmed it. And then Pashinyan banned the Catholicos from leaving the country. There was an international bishopric conference in Austria and close to
Hovik Manucharyan: St. Pölten.
Harut Sassounian: Vienna, and the Catholicos and a few of the bishops were banned from leaving the country to go to the meeting. and then the trial started a month ago three different judges recused themselves using different excuses for it and then the court of appeal said no one of the judges has to accept it so the judge accepted it and the first hearing took place a week ago and then they’re going to continue the hearing in a couple of weeks so all of this just to summarize against the Constitution. The Prime Minister and the government has no business interfering in internal.
Now, if Pashinyan had any brains, what he would have done would have done something much more to his interest. What he’s doing is against his interest. He thinks it’s against the Catholicos, but it’s against his own interest. What he should have done is he should have come up with a fake or real excuse saying that he violated this law or that law, because when you violate the law, it doesn’t matter if you’re clergyman or not.
The government has the right to pursue you in court if you violate the law. But there’s no violation of any law here. That’s the problem. And he keeps insisting on pursuing something that is not really legal instead of coming up with a legal issue.
So that’s where we are. And of course, this whole thing is very shameful because all Armenians around the world for centuries, even today we say were the first state to accept Christianity. And then even non-Armenians say that in Washington, in Europe, in Bern, everywhere, the World Council of Churches, that Armenia is the first Christian nation. They’re very proud of it.
And now we see that the head of the first Christian nation is taking Catholicos to court, and possibly if he’s found guilty, he can be sentenced to prison,
Hovik Manucharyan: how much of this confrontation is truly about church governance? The report by Pashinyan that he ordered his government to publish headlined with violations of the oath of celibacy. Meanwhile, Pashinyan, I don’t believe, is even married in the church. but how much of it is about church governance or…
Harut Sassounian: He’s not married by the government. He’s not married by church or by the government.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. Or how much of it is truly disagreements over internal Armenian foreign policy? I would not exclude that, let’s say. But also the third option, how much of it is possibly directed from the outside by geopolitical actors?
Harut Sassounian: Well, I know, I hear this conspiracy theory, there’s plenty of them in Armenia, that everything to do with either there’s a foreign forces interfering, they even accuse Pashinyan of being an agent of foreign forces, which I don’t believe, even though I oppose him, but I have to be fair. constantly foreign forces what I think the real issue is it has nothing to do with oath of celibacy or anything else it’s just because the Catholicos said that he should resign and Pashinyan is a very thin skinned person he’s highly intolerant even though for 8 years day and night he talks about democracy but he violates the first principle of democracy freedom of expression.
So anybody who disagrees with him, I’m not talking about anything illegal or violent, just disagreement. You write a Facebook message, you criticize him, you’re in trouble already, if you’re in Armenia. And if you’re not in Armenia, you’re on the blacklist, you can’t enter the country. So most of it is because the clergy, Catholicos, they disagree with his policies, giving up Artsakh, etc.
So he just can’t stand it. to take action. And because he, not only the Catholicos, on all issues, he proudly mentioned in the Parliament, when he said, I made a decision on some issue, they asked him, who did you consult? He said, nobody. I made my own decision.
So he’s like all-powerful, one-man rule. He doesn’t,
Asbed Bedrossian: He’s a know-it-all.
Harut Sassounian: he doesn’t, but he thinks he is. And then he doesn’t ask for any i don’t mind if he doesn’t know everything nobody knows everything but at least you have advisors uh wise advisors that you listen to he doesn’t have wise advisors and if something somebody by mistake says something intelligent he ignores it so he probably told the parliament i consulted nobody i made my own decision which is very bad he he
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah.
Harut Sassounian: in every decision of every kind whether legal illegal you know he interferes in the court in the parliament, what the president decides, what the constitutional court decides, what anybody decides. So it’s a one-man show.
Hovik Manucharyan: But can I just respond to that? Because let’s say if it’s not directed from the outside, and I want to have a more detailed discussion about that, but can we ignore the fact that this is being used both by what we thought were friends of the Armenian Church and Armenia’s enemies? For instance, the head Caucasian spiritual leader has said that the Armenian Church is a threat to regional security.
Even we see the Catholic Church taking advantage of this weakness of the Armenian Church and signing deals with Azerbaijan, left and right, and even lending credence to this, you know, I think hosting conferences where the issue of this Caucasian Albanians is discussed. So can we say that in terms of the effect this is having, you know, it is being used by geopolitical actors very effectively.
Harut Sassounian: Well, I don’t think that’s the reason, but there are issues that come up. In terms of what the Vatican is doing, which is shameful, they’re doing it simply for, pure and simply for fundraising. Aliyev ’s wife has a foundation, made a major donation to the Vatican Library and other donations. So they’re after Aliyev’s money.
And so is the EU, so is the US. The whole world is after money. so Aliyev has billions of petrodollars so he uses that left and right and we remember a couple of years ago he donated two billion dollars not million, billion dollars to EU members to rule in favor of Azerbaijan and they got caught and they got kicked out of the EU etc so this is something very routine for Aliyev to do it really has nothing to do with with buying Europeans and others with money.
Asbed Bedrossian: Harut, let’s go back to the issue of constitutionality, because some of these differences started, as you said, many years ago when Garegin II asked for the resignation of Pashinyan after the war, along with everybody else in the Armenian world. and then a year and a half ago in Bern it was because the Catholicos actually brought up the rights of the Artsakhtsis for their return for their humane treatment and reparations and such things now article 18 of the Armenian constitution recognizes the Armenian apostolic church for its exclusive mission it uses those words as a national church in Armenian spiritual life, national culture, and national identity.
It also says relations between the church and the state may be regulated by law, sure. But if the church believes that the government is conducting policies that are deleterious to Armenian culture, identity, and spiritual life, and publicly opposes such policies, is the church not within its rights, in fact, its constitutional responsibility, to speak up and raise awareness?
Harut Sassounian: Well, I agree 100%. This is usually used against people like us who don’t live in Armenia. And they say you have no right to comment on issues in Armenia. You don’t live here.
And I tell them, listen, I have full right to say anything I want. I’m not causing any trouble, committing violence, anything like that. I’m just giving my opinion. and how can I be deprived of the right to express myself? It’s a First Amendment right in the United States and freedom of expression, democracy, which Pashinyan supposedly believes in.
So I also add that if anybody who’s a patriotic Armenian cares about the survival of Armenia and if he sees something is going wrong, It doesn’t matter whether it’s Pashinyan, Kocharyan, Serzh, and I have plenty of arguments with all the previous leaders face to face in the palace for years. So anybody who’s caring about Armenia and sees that the leadership is doing something wrong, seriously wrong, with the existence of Armenia, if they don’t speak up, that’s what’s wrong. That’s what should be condemned for not speaking out
Asbed Bedrossian: Mmh.
Harut Sassounian: and allowing things to go wrong until we lose the country.
Asbed Bedrossian: So when we have these policy differences between the head of the church and the head
Harut Sassounian: Thank you.
Asbed Bedrossian: of the state, what actions can the government actually legitimately take?
Harut Sassounian: Well, you know, Pashinyan probably says Armenia is a democracy. In a democracy, there are all sorts of opinions. We know we live in the United States. The most, I mean, I’m also anti-Trump, but I see that people say the most god-awful things against Trump, and they get away with it because of freedom of expression.
They say he’s corrupt, he’s this, he’s that, he’s a thief, a crook, etc. So Pashinyan doesn’t have to like what the Catholicos says, but the Catholicos has the right to express himself. Especially those of us who agree with him that Pashinyan is pursuing wrong policies, then it’s fine what he’s doing. But even if you don’t like what Catholicos is doing, he has the right, and Pashinyan has the right to criticize him.
But he’s gone much beyond criticism. Now he’s set up a whole committee, they issued an 80-page document listing all the things that are wrong with H.M. Azgayin, and now they’re going to remove him, force him to retire, have new elections, change the constitution, the bylaws of the church. I mean, none of those things are really legal.
He has no business getting involved in any of those things. If the church violates the law, that’s a different thing. But we’re not talking about violating law. We’re talking about church, over 1,000-year-old church bylaws, that those are all decisions to be made by church people.
Hovik Manucharyan: Sassounian, earlier this month, I believe, the ambassador of Armenia to the U.S. coordinated a high-profile, at least highly publicized meeting with the participation of the leadership of the Eastern Diocese, the Western Diocese, I believe even Prelacy members, with Trump’s spiritual
Harut Sassounian: Yeah.
Hovik Manucharyan: advisor.
Harut Sassounian: And Catholics, quite a few.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah, and they even got a photo op with Trump. This government keeps talking about foreign states intervening in the issues of the Armenian Church. Now, this is, I think, important because Archbishop Hovnan Derderian was one of the signatories of that statement, supporting Pashinyan in his efforts to reform the Church. So Hovnan Derderian is head of the Western Diocese.
And the meeting with Trump, I mean, it reeks to me of attempts by the Armenian government to essentially raise a profile, at least, of Hovnan Derderian. What are your thoughts about the behavior of the Armenian clergy in the United
Harut Sassounian: Yep.
Hovik Manucharyan: States under the leadership of Hovnan Derderian? And the Trump administration’s also involvement in this. And I mean, I don’t see an issue with clergy meeting the president or his special advisor, but it was all coordinated by the government, it seems.
Harut Sassounian: Well, I have some serious things to talk about on this issue. Well, I have some serious things to talk about on this issue. delegation was led under his leadership, that is false. That’s a false claim. They were all invited.
So was the primate of the diocese in New York. So were the two prelates of the Prelacies in New York and Los Angeles, Catholics, Protestants, etc. So this whole thing was orchestrated by Ambassador Narek Mkrtchyan, the Armenian Ambassador in Washington. Now, it’s a very clever move.
Ambassador Mkrtchyan is a very active person as opposed to his predecessor, Lilit Makunts, who was totally inactive. But he’s very active. He met with the faith leader of the White House. It’s a lady.
And Mkrtchyan has ongoing meetings with her. So somehow he talked her into it and he talked Trump into it. And it was a meeting. Now, there’s a good side and a bad side.
Oh, I also wanted to say something about Hovnan Derderian, because you mentioned his name.
To be fair to him, after he signed that statement calling for the Catholicos to be changed, when the Catholicos organized a meeting in Austria, Hovnan Derderian, who was one of the anti-Catholicos bishops, archbishops, he went to Austria and not only he went there not only he was in the meeting at the end they issued a statement which he signed also along with all the other bishops clergymen who follow the Garegin Catholicos so he it’s not really sure he’s on both sides of the scale he’s against the Catholicos but he’s for the Catholicos and even since he came back, this was months ago about the issue of why has he changed his position about the Catholicos since he signed that statement in Austria or is he still sticking to the earlier statement he signed etc so that’s about all the answer now coming to the White House there’s good and bad the good thing is well it’s a very special unique opportunity for high ranking Armenian clergymen from all sides to go and meet the the President of the United States.
It’s an honor for anybody, whether you like him, don’t like him, but it’s an honor. Now, here are a couple of serious issues that I would like to comment on, and I haven’t talked to any of them, and I should have, and maybe I will soon, to find out rather than just guess. In none of the press releases about the meeting from any side, and I read all of them, nobody says anything about, they mentioned the fact that they would like to have better Armenia and U.S. relations. So it’s a very hyped up PR type statements, which is understandable.
They went to the White House, they met the president, so they’re very proud and happy. Now, what’s missing from all of these statements is two important things. One, the Armenian prisoners are still in Baku. Did any of the clergymen from any of the sides, any one of those dozen clergymen, say a word to the president about the Baku prisoners?
Especially since something most people have forgotten, on August 8th, a year ago, when Pashinyan and Aliyev came to the White House, on a couple of occasions, the prisoners issue came up. When Pashinyan and Trump were alone signing the MOU, Trump himself offered, not Pashinyan, he said, shouldn’t we also talk about the prisoners in Baku? He called it the Christian prisoners in Baku, which is the Armenians. And amazingly, Pashinyan jumped in immediately and said, no, no, We don’t want to mention a single word in the MOU about the prisoners.
Why? Because he’s always so careful, cautious, scared of doing anything that Aliyev may not like. So he thinks that would ruin his peace deal and all that, which got ruined anyway because it’s still not signed, even a year later and two years after they agreed on the language. They just initialed in the White House the peace deal.
Now, so the first instance is when Trump offered to be helpful. the second time was Trump said you know if I call Aliyev and ask him to release the prisoners to release the prisoners he will do it as a favor to me word for word that’s what he said and Pashinyan did not say anything and the last part is as Pashinyan was leaving the White House the car came Trump walked with him to the car to the front door of the White House and as he was saying goodbye Trump told Pashinyan you have my WhatsApp phone number call me anytime something comes up and Pashinyan said thank you and got in the car and left
Asbed Bedrossian: Hmm.
Harut Sassounian: now if Pashinyan was really interested which I know he’s not we can go into that also a year it’s been over a year now and the president is telling him, you have my WhatsApp number, call me, anything comes up. He could say very nicely, without being critical or anything, saying, Mr. President, remember in the White House you mentioned about calling Aliyev, he would release the prisoners as a favor to you. I know you have a million things to do.
You have a war going on to Ukraine, Iran, et cetera, a million problems, elections. When you have the time, I just want to remind you about your offer to talk about calling Aliyev about the prisoners. He hasn’t done that. Why?
Because he doesn’t want these prisoners released. He’s afraid that these people, these prisoners, will come to Yerevan and increase the number of his opponents. In fact, over a year ago, before the White House meeting, when Pashinyan was giving a press conference in Yerevan, without any of the journalists there asking him any questions about the prisoners, Pashinyan volunteered on his own, and he brought up the subject. He said, well, what I would like to know is, who sent Ruben Vardanyan to Artsakh?
For what reason? To do what? What was he doing there? In other words, not only is he not talking about, I’m going to do everything I can to help him get released, he’s raising questionable issues about why he was there.
The rumors are that Putin or the KGB sent Ruben Vardanyan to Artsakh to make trouble, etc., etc., which Pashinyan doesn’t like. He wants that issue forgotten, closed. That’s why he criticizes Catholicos for Artsakh. He criticizes the Artsakhtsis.
He says they’re not citizens. And even when they had a meeting in the Armenian Parliament about Artsakh Armenians, all the members of his party from the parliament got up and walked out of the parliament. I mean, this is really extreme. It’s not even a disagreement.
They can stay there and ask questions, give their comment, but walking out like they’re walking out on a bunch of Azeris. It’s very, very shameful.
Asbed Bedrossian: Okay, Harut, let’s go to another meeting that Pashinyan had when he was in New York last week. He was at the UN General Assembly, 81, and notably he met with Turkish President Erdogan . He attended a Trump reception. He gave a very meek and submissive talk at the UNGA where he mentioned none of Armenia’s problems, including the Armenian prisoners of war , and just gave the rosy picture that basically, I think, Aliyev and Erdogan had scripted for him.
Notably, though, his cronies had arranged a meeting with some of the leadership of the All-ASA group, and this is an umbrella group bringing together all of the college ASAs in the United States. And as the news of this meeting came out, nobody really knew that it was going to happen. It divided the All-ASA because it seems like not everybody was on board with this meeting. What happened here?
Harut Sassounian: Okay, I just want to make one correction.
Asbed Bedrossian: Mm-hmm.
Harut Sassounian: I know I constantly criticize Pashinyan, but when he does something correct, and I want to be fair to him and say what’s correct.
Asbed Bedrossian: Sure.
Harut Sassounian: In his UN speech, which before I come to giving the speech in the UN, I saw something amazing regarding the speech. Pashinyan is constantly going on Facebook every minute. I don’t know how he can run the country on Facebook every hour. So, unfortunately, I follow every post he makes.
So, it all started at the Yerevan airport. He’s at the airport waiting for the plane. He makes a post on his Facebook page. He says, I’m now waiting to board the plane to New York.
So, he’s standing there on tarmac. Then he gets on the plane. Then he makes another post while he’s walking to his seat. so then he sits in his seat then he pulls this gift bag that they give to passengers and he pulls a toothbrush he’s showing the toothbrush to the screen that i got a toothbrush some sandal
Hovik Manucharyan: Socks.
Harut Sassounian: or hush puppies pulls from the bag i mean i don’t know why he’s doing that so that was the second thing. Then, a little bit later, he’s back on Facebook, in the plane, I guess he has Wi-Fi connection, he has his laptop in front of him, he’s typing, and he says, I’m typing my speech at the UN for tomorrow. Now, when I saw that, I really got very upset and angry and very worried, because how can the Prime Minister of any country in the world General Assembly, he’s going to address the world on all sorts of supposedly important issues.
He doesn’t have his speech written at home when he’s rested and focused on the issue and doesn’t have any of his advisors giving input or speech writers, God forbid, which he probably doesn’t have. so he’s writing his speech tired, exhausted jet lag on the plane to New York from Yerevan all the way to New York which is probably like 13 hours or something and it’s a very important speech addressing the world and he’s writing on the plane it really concerned me a lot
Asbed Bedrossian: Yeah.
Harut Sassounian: so then we come to the speech so I it was an 18 minute speech and I listened to all of it and I was surprised and I will be honest he did mention the Armenian prisoners in Baku which initially I’d skipped that part so I went back and watched it and yes he did mention the prisoners in Baku, he also mentions a second issue which I don’t remember right now anyway coming back to the ASA now yes I wrote as you saw I wrote a column uh about this controversy the uh Some things I left out because I only want to write about things that I know for sure that I’m able to verify. Other things are hearsay.
The leader of the All-ASA in the U.S. is a Hayastantsi young person, probably quite intelligent guy. I don’t want to put him down. And he had connections with Pashinyan in Yerevan before coming to the U.S. And so he uses contacts, probably also now has contacts with Mkrtchyan, the ambassador in Washington.
And he was able to arrange a meeting with a handful of Armenian students last minute without really consulting with the All-ASA board or the various university chapter leadership. now normally to be fair there would be in a normal time there would be nothing wrong with any one of us meeting with Pashinyan I know I went to Armenia in 2019 and I met with him for an hour and after all he’s the head of state and he represents the Republic of Armenia, head of government sorry and he So meeting with head of government is nothing wrong with it.
The only problem we have here, that’s why it’s an issue, he’s such a controversial person besides being head of government that he’s said things against the Genocide. He’s handed over Artsakh to Azerbaijan after saying, “Artsakh is Armenia, period.” He constantly talks against Mount Ararat and other Armenian symbols. He’s changing the constitution at Aliyev’s demands. So he’s not your regular, typical leader of Armenia or any country.
There’s nothing wrong with meeting with him, even if you don’t like him you disagree with him.
He’s a very controversial person, and he’s done really serious anti-Armenian positions. even Azerbaijan besides Artsakh they’ve entered the Republic of Armenia territories in 2021 and 22 and they’re still there and they’re not leaving and when they ask Pashinyan what are you going to do your constitutional duty is to protect the borders of Armenia and he says I’m not going to do anything so meeting him is different from meeting a typical normal head of state and because they did it confidentially without really consulting the other board members it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and this is really not a political issue the ASA is supposed to be apolitical, non-partisan and in there there are Pashinyan likers, no problem Pashinyan haters, no problem they all come together as students and discuss educational things and Armenian things without partisanship.
So this was the problem. Now, it’s interesting that all the meetings he had in the UN, including Erdogan and others, if he really wanted to meet with the Armenian community in New York, open meeting. All he had to do is rent a hall and invite hundreds, if not thousands of New York Armenians to come there, listen to his speech. He has the right to say whatever he wants.
We do not like what he says, but it’s fine. He can say it. And then allow people to ask questions. Get up, not written questions in advance and censored, but ask anything they want, and some people may criticize him.
But he’s avoiding all this. The same way he avoids when he goes to, when he went to Bern, for example, he went to Paris, he came to Washington, D.C., the embassy, He went to…
Asbed Bedrossian: And his envoy, Zareh Sinanyan, when he comes to Los Angeles, nobody hears about these meetings,
Harut Sassounian: Right.
Asbed Bedrossian: but then there is some kind of a meeting with leaders who nobody knows.
Harut Sassounian: also one more thing about the ASA meeting. The leaderships who have close connection with the prime minister, initially they wrote to some ASA members inviting them and they said, submit your questions in writing in advance. So they were pre-screening who attends and what they can ask, they’re pre-screening the questions. But when they got a lot of criticism back, they said, okay, the questions were only for our information.
We mishandled the transparency. You can come in and ask anything you want. But to this day, we really don’t know. We don’t have the – again, Pashinyan did the same thing he does with all his foreign meetings.
They pick up the cell phones of everybody in the meeting so nobody can record. take a picture. Nobody can report what was discussed, what was said, especially in answer to questions that he may not like. But then Pashinyan goes on his Facebook page right afterwards, and he puts like 30 seconds, a few things that he said, a couple of sentences, and a couple of photos that he met with diaspora.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yeah. I mean, this whole ASA issue is near and dear to me because it’s an organization that I used to be part of. I had a role, however, minor, maybe as president of the CSUN ASA back in the day in trying to create these fora for ASA organizations to collaborate. so yeah I don’t have an issue if there is a meeting but to me it seems like the main issue was the All-ASA brand being used or just basically a Pashinyan photo op and the lack of transparency transparency behind the meeting what was discussed and essentially it was I don’t see what the Armenian student associations got name being used for politics. Is that your understanding as well?
Harut Sassounian: Yeah, it’s like you said, photo op. It’s a propaganda coup for Pashinyan that on one hand, they’re constantly criticizing the diaspora, saying, we don’t need your help. Don’t give us any humanitarian aid. Pashinyan said this several times in several places.
He keeps talking about used shoes, used clothing, expired medicine, which is a lie. I’m probably the largest donor of medicine in the world to Armenia over a billion and not only we don’t send expired medicine even if we’re foolish enough to attempt such a thing, medicine brought to Armenia must have at least one year medicine brought to Armenia must have at least one year expiration date one year so nobody can bring in expired medicine less than a year expired medicine, because customs will take it and throw it in the garbage can. So he just bad-mouthing diaspora help. He also said, we don’t need any humanitarian aid from diaspora.
My government is capable of fully meeting the needs of our people. I wish that was true. We wouldn’t have done what we’re doing. I always explain to people that besides providing life-saving medicine to people, doesn’t exist in Armenia, or some of them are so expensive, like cancer medicine, cost thousands of dollars a pill.
Not only are we saving the lives of the people, we’re also saving millions of dollars every year of Armenia’s budget. Because if we don’t ship the medicine ourselves, I ship about $30 million a year. The Armenian government, if they care about the people and want to take care of them, they would have spent 30 million dollars from their meager budget to spend money on buying medicine
Asbed Bedrossian: All of these things we’ve been talking about all indicate a good amount of damage to
Asbed Bedrossian: Armenia-Diaspora relations. So we should talk about this. The June 7th parliamentary elections are behind us, obviously. So at this moment in time, it looks to us like we have five more years of this government in office.
And under Pashinyan, especially since the catastrophic loss in the 44-day war , there has been a steady erosion of national values and identity as well. There has been an erosion of the global nation concept of Armenians. He degrades Armenia diaspora relations, as we’ve seen, in search of pretexts for his personal and leadership failures, made up concepts like real Armenia, which excludes the vast majority of Armenians around the world. So where do you think our relations stand post-June 7?
Harut Sassounian: Well, it’s in very bad shape and getting worse by the day. It all started in 2018 when he first came to power. And one of the first things he did was he dismissed the diaspora ministry. And then he appointed Sinanyan as the commissioner, high commissioner for diaspora.
I’m guessing, my guess is that even if Pashinyan wanted to make Sinanyan the successor diaspora minister he couldn’t have because Sinanyan as we know is a US citizen even though born in Armenia but a US citizen and in order to get a high ranking position like minister you can’t be a dual citizen if he has kept his Armenian citizenship so maybe that’s why he downgraded the ministry to a commissioner. But what followed after that is much worse than that. Sinanyan has repeatedly, every interview he gives, he goes out of his way to belittle the diaspora organizations, especially the opposition, major political parties. And that’s not his job.
His job is not to do PR for Pashinyan or even the government. His job is to be a bridge between Armenia and the diaspora. He’s supposed to deal with every kind of diaspora Armenian, no matter what side they’re on, no matter whether they like the government or oppose the government. He’s supposed to be a bridge.
He’s supposed to win over. He wants to invite them and meet with them, talk to them. You know, when he comes here, he doesn’t tell anybody he’s here. He meets with a good couple of people.
And recently, he started appointing a few young people in different countries commissioners for Diaspora, but those are people who are pro-Pashinyan people. That’s also wrong. He should appoint the most qualified, knowledgeable people of diaspora in Armenia so they can help him serve as the bridge. He’s always a partisan.
He’s always defending Pashinyan, attacking the people who don’t like Pashinyan. That’s not his job. For Pashinyan. Pashinyan has his spokesman.
He has his political party. They have a majority in parliament. They have all the ministers. They do PR for Pashinyan day and night.
So they don’t need Sinanyan. He’s just making a big mistake. I’ve criticized him a few times, especially recently. They made it more difficult for Armenians to be citizens.
You need to go there and live there I think two, three years and they increased the fee to pay to become a citizen and recently they’ve been talking about bringing non-Armenians to immigrate to Armenia to increase the population of Armenia and we’re
Asbed Bedrossian: And reduce the monoethnic status of the population.
Harut Sassounian: so they need non-Armenians to increase the population but non-Armenians to increase the population. And I remember Zareh Sinanyan a few years ago when he was on his way to Lebanon at the airport. Again, every time somebody approaches him, he says something crazy. He said, well, when I go to Lebanon, I’m going to ask Lebanese Arabs to immigrate to Armenia.
And I wrote a column criticizing him for that. Lebanon has problems, they should be encouraged to come to Armenia and give them jobs, give them housing, help them. Many of those people who are coming on their own, fleeing the wars, they stay a couple of years at most and then they cannot survive in Armenia, they leave. A lot of thousands of them have left who are from Syria, Iraq, especially in Lebanon.
Asbed Bedrossian: So, assuming that we have five more years of this government, Sinanyan or no Sinanyan, how can this relationship between Armenia and the diaspora be fixed? What actors really need to do what in order to steer us all together back on track?
Harut Sassounian: Okay. Well, by the way, Pashinyan made another announcement a month or two ago. He said, I’m running for prime minister in 2031. So he just got a prime minister.
Asbed Bedrossian: Prime Minister for Life
Harut Sassounian: And I was saying, I mean, I think my guess is this guy wants to remain on his seat for the rest of his life.
Asbed Bedrossian: Mm-hmm.
Harut Sassounian: a lot of people don’t know this you know it but a lot of people don’t know there’s no term limit for prime minister
Asbed Bedrossian: Right.
Harut Sassounian: it’s five years and he can be reappointed by a majority in parliament now to answer your question what is the solution I can only speak for myself here’s my idea my idea is regardless of who we are, where we are whether we like the head of state or we don’t like him we’re all Armenians homeland that’s Armenia we have no other homeland than Armenia we should all do everything we can to support our country that doesn’t mean that we say yes sir to everything that the existing leader of the country does because nobody’s perfect they do things wrong and I’ve spent years telling them everything wrong they’re doing to their faces so so that’s different because you care about Armenia, you don’t want anything to go wrong.
You want to correct the mistakes so people can have a better life. Our people deserve a better life. So, now, if everybody cared about Armenia rather than caring about their either their side or their chair, their position, their politics, what they should do is on both sides, on all sides, not just one side, because one side doesn’t work. Like they say, it takes two to tango.
It takes two sides. Both sides have to put all other misunderstandings aside. Because we have a serious problem in Armenia to deal with. We have powerful enemies on our borders.
And we have war on the other side of the border, Iran, which is concerning and is getting very bad. Now the U.S. government is pressuring all the countries not to allow any planes to fly from Iran to various countries, including Armenia. Azerbaijan already banned Iranian Airlines and I haven’t heard anything about Armenia as well.
Hovik Manucharyan: Armenia has as well.
Harut Sassounian: and Iranians are very unhappy with that and they’re always supportive of Armenia politically so what I believe in that people on all sides have to come and sit down at the common table facing each other put all of their misunderstandings, disagreements aside and say we can work together, how we can make Armenia a better country, a stronger country. That’s what they should do. I’m willing to do that, and I’ve done this before. I’ll give you a very short example.
When Levon Ter-Petrosyan was president, for whatever reason, he, you know, I started to send millions of dollars help back then when he was president. And for whatever reason, he started bad-mouthing me to a lot of very important high -level people, including my board members. And so I was not happy, but I kept helping. And for the first 25 years of Armenian Independence, every time Levon, others send the ambassador to Washington, whether I like them, don’t like them, agreed with them, disagreed with them, or the leader, They call me regularly, ask for advice, ask me to put them in touch with members of Congress, my contacts, etc.
I always said yes, never said no, because you’re on the wrong side. I went to Washington several times, met with them at the embassy. But now, since Pashinyan, nobody wants to contact me, nobody wants to talk to me. But if Ambassador Mkrtchyan will call me tomorrow and ask if there’s something I could do, I’ll gladly do it.
It’s not an issue of Pashinyan or our disagreement. That’s what we need. We need to put Armenia above everything else. But both sides.
Asbed Bedrossian: Harut, you’re a bigger person than a lot of the rest of us, let’s say. I just find it a little difficult to see exactly how we’re going to do this at a time when, let’s say, Pashinyan is creating the concept of real Armenia that excludes all of the rest of the nation outside of the borders, the shrinking borders, and then trying to define also a so-called new diaspora, which pretty much excludes all of the traditional institutions, for example, let’s say the AGBUs, the ARFs, the ArmES, and your foundation, for example, and everybody else that matters.
He’s just basically trying to start from 20-year-olds who have absolutely no baggage and recreate his own new diaspora. How do you put all of that aside and just sit around the table? I mean, it’s one thing to come under one umbrella and feel the unity. But if you are going to be united with a guy who wants to give Armenia away, how do you do this?
Harut Sassounian: Well, it’s not easy. It’s very painful. But I have a hope, a wishful thinking, and maybe it’s naive, that once we sit around the table and establish a good rapport and start not attacking each other right away, the minute we sit down, and we start communicating, giving our views, listening to their views, maybe little by little, we can now go into the other issues which are very serious, have to do with Armenia’s existence. And a minute ago, I mentioned Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
So when he was bad-mouthing me and was trying to get me fired and all that, so for a while, I stopped going to Armenia because every time I went to Armenia, I used to go and see the president. So because he was opposed to me, I stopped going. And then one day I got a phone call from his secretary saying, the president’s inviting you to Armenia to meet with him. And I was surprised, of course, but I said, of course, I’ll be there tomorrow.
And I went to the airport, got on a plane and flew to Armenia and I went to the palace and Levon said, I know some bad things were said in the past. I said, oh, he also told the secretary, cancel all my meetings today, I’m going to spend the day with Harut Sassounian. So when he said, you know, bad things were said in the past, I said, Mr. President, I’m going to say only two words about that part.
And then we’re going to change the subject and talk about how diaspora and Armenia can work together to help Armenia. He said, what are the two words? You know, I was speaking, of course, Armenian to him. In Armenian, I said, And I stopped there.
Asbed Bedrossian: Not pleasant.
Harut Sassounian: Not pleasant. That’s all I said. And then we talked about helping Armenia, doing things, et cetera. So it’s very difficult because things are really gone out of control.
Asbed Bedrossian: Mm-hmm.
Harut Sassounian: And it’s very emotional. Armenians are emotional people. And the minute somebody disagrees with you or me, we take that as enmity rather than just a difference of opinion. And so we are close to hating each other.
We’re one people. We’ve been hated by our enemies for centuries. But now we end up hating each other. It’s not easy to forget about all the sacred things that Pashinyan has stepped on and violated.
It’s not easy. But we don’t even have step one. Step one is, like Pashinyan, will he ever call any one of us and say, come over, I want to talk to you about our differences? I don’t think so.
Asbed Bedrossian: I doubt, yeah, I doubt it.
Harut Sassounian: So let’s start with step one. I’m saying to the public, I’m ready to meet with him or anyone else. But I can’t just walk in his office uninvited.
Asbed Bedrossian: Right.
Harut Sassounian: Same thing goes to the ambassador in Washington or any other minister.
Asbed Bedrossian: Right. Well, eye-opening comments. Harut Sassounian, thank you so much for coming on our show and expressing all these positive thoughts. We’ll end on that so that for once our show can end on a positive note.
Harut Sassounian: Thank you very much for the invitation.
Hovik Manucharyan: Thank you Mr. Sassounian.
Asbed Bedrossian: That’s our show, recorded on September 30th, 2026. We’ve been talking with Mr. Harut Sassounian, who is the chairman of the board of trustees of HyeID. He is also the publisher of the California Courier newspaper and the president of the Armenia Artsakh Fund, a non-profit organization which has delivered almost a billion dollars of humanitarian assistance to Armenia and Artsakh since 1989.
For more information, go to our website, podcasts.groong.org slash episode number. Click on the links.
Hovik Manucharyan: Please remember to like, comment, share, and subscribe to our podcast so you can be notified about future episodes that we have. Thank you very much. I’m Hovik Manucharyan.
Asbed Bedrossian: I’m Asbed Bedrossian and we’ll talk to you soon.
Hovik Manucharyan: Bye-bye.