No Criminal Charges for School Administrators Who Forced Students to Pashinyan Rallies

During the 2026 Armenian parliamentary election campaign, numerous reports documented school administrators coercing underage students to attend Pashinyan campaign rallies. These were not voluntary civic participation or student exercises in democratic engagement. Students were transported under administrative authority to serve as a backdrop for campaign events. The practice represented a clear abuse of public resources and an exploitation of minors for political purposes.

When asked whether these administrators now face criminal prosecution, Hovik’s answer is blunt: no. This is Pashinyan’s Armenia, where regime loyalists operate under a different legal framework than opposition figures. The administrators have received strict reprimands and administrative censures. No early-morning raids by the National Security Service. No SWAT teams slamming them to the asphalt. No searches of their homes or offices. No criminal indictment. The Armenian government officially confirmed that none of these administrators will face criminal trial, despite their documented abuse of state authority to mobilize child participants for a ruling party’s electoral campaign.

This selective application of justice exposes the regime’s dual legal system. Hovik and Asbed contrast this leniency with the treatment of opposition figures. When opposition-minded individuals engage in legitimate political activity, they face NSS raids at dawn, detention without clear charges, family harassment, and trials that drag on for months or years before eventual dismissal. Judges who attempt to release opposition figures face criminal investigations of their own, their offices sealed, their careers threatened. Yet administrators who instrumentalize children for regime propaganda face no meaningful consequences. The message is unmistakable: loyalty to Pashinyan’s government grants immunity from prosecution, while dissent or perceived disloyalty triggers a cascade of legal harassment designed to neutralize political opponents. This is not justice; it is vendetta politics dressed in bureaucratic language.