As Canada plans to send election observers to Armenia, advocates warn of a democratic backslide

As the federal government prepares to send election observers to Armenia, an advocacy group featuring the former president of Human Rights Watch is warning Canada and its Western allies of democratic backsliding prior to the June vote.

"We found a disturbing tendency on the part of the current government [of Armenia] to try to suppress opposition points of view and actually to undermine some of the independent institutions that might have served as a check on executive overreach," said Kenneth Roth of the International Observatory for Democracy in Armenia (IODA), which conducted a fact-finding mission to Yerevan in March.

IODA also wrote letters to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Global Affairs Canada focusing on its findings, the group said.

Canada is looking to hire seven independent elections observers to send to Armenia ahead of its parliamentary elections next month, the Privy Council Office told CBC News in a statement. They will be part of a larger mission deployed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

The move comes on the heels of Carney's visit to Yerevan during a European Political Community (EPC) summit last week.

The EPC, a body composed of the European Union's 27 member states and other countries on the EU's periphery, was an initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022, in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Carney was the first non-European leader invited to the event. He spent about 30 hours on the ground in Yerevan meeting mostly with EU leaders, but also his Armenian counterpart, Nikol Pashinyan.

"Our histories are deeply intertwined," Carney said in a speech at the opening of the summit, noting the tens of millions of Canadians with European roots, "including more than 60,000 of Armenian descent."

He noted shared values, citing freedom, the rule of law, democracy and pluralism, and highlighted Canada's role as "the only non-European participant in the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA)."

The EUMA is a civilian force set up to monitor the border between Armenia and neighbouring Azerbaijan, after two major wars in the last three decades between the two over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Recognized under international law as part of Azerbaijan, but historically with a majority ethnic Armenian population, the conflicts ended with Baku's victory and Karabakh's Armenian population fleeing to Armenia in 2023.

"It's as if ... Western governments, including Canada, have basically decided that for geopolitical purposes it doesn't matter if there's democracy in Armenia," said Roth. "As long as the government that emerges from it is on the West's side."

IODA, which includes former Liberal MP Bryan May on its executive and former Alberta premier Jason Kenney on its advisory board, warned in March "of the [Armenian] government's interference in the independence of the judiciary and religious establishment, as well as politicized prosecutions of perceived political opponents, including political leaders, media figures, lawyers and members of the clergy."

Among those imprisoned is Pashinyan's main political opponent Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian business tycoon currently under house arrest, as well as multiple members of the clergy including Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a Canadian citizen who spent a decade in Montreal as primate of the Armenian Diocese of Canada.

Most of Pashinyan's opponents have been critical of his pivot away from Russia, Armenia's traditional ally, as well as what they see as too many concessions by the Armenian government in its quest for peace with Azerbaijan.

Galstanyan and many others are facing charges of attempting to mount a coup against Pashinyan.

Carney did not publicly address Galstanyan's imprisonment during his visit to Yerevan, and it is unclear if he raised it when he met privately with Pashinyan.

A spokesperson for the Privy Council Office told CBC News that "consular officials have provided assistance to the individual and are closely monitoring the trial," but said it could not disclose further information due to privacy considerations.

"There clearly is a threat of Russian disinformation, but the idea of using that threat to fend off criticism of clearly anti-democratic practices on the part of the ruling party is basically a matter of trying to save democracy by defeating it," Roth said.

"And that has been a very successful strategy on the part of Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan because it has silenced Western critics and the European Union."

One set of issues about which Western countries including Canada have been more vocal than Pashinyan is the fallout from the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

The European Parliament passed a resolution days before the EPC summit, calling on Baku to release Armenian prisoners of war, for refugees from the enclave to have a right to return under security guarantees, and for accountability for the destruction of Armenian cultural and religious heritage.

The resolution also happened to come days after Azerbaijan destroyed two churches in Karabakh's former de facto capital city, known as Khankendi in Azerbaijani and Stepanakert in Armenian.

In a statement, Azerbaijan's religious authority, the Caucasus Muslims Board, defended the move, saying the buildings were "illegally constructed in Khankendi during the occupation of Azerbaijan's territories."

Speaking to journalists at a news conference in Yerevan, Carney pointed to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's virtual participation in the EPC summit as an "important sign of the commitment" to the peace process.

"But it's a process, and in any peace process there are always a series of issues, important issues, fundamental issues, humanitarian issues that need to be addressed over time," Carney added.

He also pointed to how Pashinyan himself did not raise the issue of demolished churches during the summit.

"I think this is, probably for Armenia, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, one of the more critical elections," said Jack Sullens, a lawyer who lectures about election law at the University of Windsor, and has observed many elections as a Canadian member of the OSCE in eastern European countries.

He pointed out that it's the first election in Armenia since Azerbaijan completely retook Nagorno-Karabakh, where he visited in 2010 to observe parliamentary elections of the unrecognized ethnic Armenian republic that ran the place at the time.

Sullens said the role of the observers sent by Canada and other countries will be crucial, and not just on the day of the vote.

"It's things such as campaign registration and candidate registration. These are kind of the key components of, are you actually running a real election, a real transparent election?"