I will not leave the fight unfinished; I have neither the intention nor the right to leave a 'Nikol' Armenia to my children and to all our children. — Political Prisoner Narek Samsonyan
Narek Samsonyan, head of the "Civil Consciousness" NGO, founder of AntiFake.am, co-author and co-host of the "Imnemnimi" Podcast, and political prisoner, sent a message from the "Armavir" Penitentiary, which was read by his wife, Lusine Arakelyan, during hearings on the topic of political prisoners at the National Assembly.
"Dear friends,
Greetings to all of you from the “Armavir” Penitentiary. As you are already aware, Vazgen and I have once again been deprived of our liberty for speaking out, because the ringleader of the regime, who regularly tours this very hall, is terrified of speech.
Our current imprisonment is neither about swearing nor, even more so, about the now-famous “buttocks”, no matter how much someone might wish it were so.
Our case is about the lack of elementary morality and legal lawlessness, where the person who swore at us, upon receiving a response, ordered our detention without any legal basis for using the “buttocks”. The investigator who presented the motion for my detention, the prosecutor, and the judge who signed off on it know this better than anyone.
But since they have turned into a repressive apparatus, they obediently executed the order, and in the future, they will inevitably face the criminal-legal consequences provided for such actions.
As for the one who issued the political order to arrest us, in the slang of old Yerevan, he has long since earned the “laurels”befitting such behavior.
In any case, we were informed weeks before the arrest that the regime, terrified of speech, was planning to imprison us again; so, none of this was a secret to us, nor were the deprivations anything new.
In general, under the conditions of Aliyev’s puppet regime, being a political prisoner in Armenia is not an extraordinary phenomenon. This is confirmed by statistics showing that today in our country, there are more than six dozen politically persecuted individuals, the vast majority of whom are imprisoned for political criticism directed at the regime.
The ABCs of political science suggest that the final refuge of any totalitarian ringleader is the fear of speech and the imprisonment of speech. However, that same alphabet suggests that the most effective tool for deposing such individuals is not to yield to persecution and to fight against political perversions with every possible tool.
That is precisely why, before our imprisonment, we regularly kept the topic of those persecuted by the regime in the foreground and always called for a systemic struggle for the protection of all political prisoners and their release from the regime's prisons as soon as possible. Incidentally, Armen Ashotyan made a similar proposal when he was released from prison.
Today, even from prison, I hold the same conviction: persecution by the regime must be answered with active struggle against it. We must knock on every door; we must ensure that the case of every single political prisoner and persecuted individual reaches the wider public and the ambassadors of Western countries, whose job has become assuming the role of sanitizers for the violent acts of this loathsome regime.
The coordinated application of this entire toolkit can provide systemic solutions to the current situation. In any case, my team, my supporters, and I will not leave this fight unfinished, because I have neither the intention nor the right to leave a 'Nikol' Armenia to my children and to all our children.
Freedom to all prisoners of the regime.
Political Prisoner Narek Samsonyan,
“Armavir” Penitentiary
26.11.2025"
