Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that he will donate his personal copy of the Bible to the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
In a video published on social media, Pashinyan said that he had owned the Bible since 2008, having received it while in hiding following the deadly clashes that erupted following the 2008 presidential election.
‘I’d like to remind you that I was in hiding from 2 March 2008, until 1 July 2009. I carried it with me afterward in prison, for one year and eleven months’, he said.
The presidential elections that year saw Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, running against Serzh Sargsyan from the then-ruling Republican party, which endorsed incumbent President Robert Kocharyan in the 2003 elections.
At the time, Pashinyan was a prominent supporter of Ter-Petrosyan in opposition to Sargsyan.
Following the 2008 elections, violent protests erupted on 1 March, with police dispersal leading to the death of 10 people and the injury of dozens of others.
After spending over a year in hiding after the deadly protests, Pashinyan voluntarily surrendered himself to the police in June 2009, and was sentenced in January 2010 to seven years in prison on charges of organising mass disorder — a sentence later halved by the authorities. Pashinyan was released from prison as part of a general amnesty in May 2011.
In his video, he said that the idea to donate the bible came to him during his latest visit to the US in August, where he, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and US President Donald Trump signed several agreements and initialled the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace treaty.
‘During my recent visit to the United States, I came up with the idea and promised to donate this copy to the Museum of the Bible in Washington. I will soon send the gift to the museum. I believe this very important and meaningful book will find its rightful place there’.
Nate Ostiller
