US media: Pashinyan should be persona non grata in Los Angeles

US media condemned the visit of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Los Angeles scheduled for September 21.

Report informs that NewsBlaze posted the article headlined 'Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan Should Be Persona Non Grata in Los Angeles'. The article notes that Armenia must not be allowed to enjoy this great honor of Pashinyan's meeting with the Armenian community of Southern California at Grand Park in Los Angeles, hosted by the City and County of Los Angeles.

"While many European nations have a Nazi past, most of them have condemned that past and its participants, and try to avoid any glorification of Nazis. Not Armenia, which considers its veterans Nazi 'heroes'," the article notes.

The article notes that in 2016, amidst significant Nazism glorification fanfare, attended by Armenian officials, a statue was unveiled in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city. The statue was of Garegin Nzhdeh, an Armenian nationalist and a revolutionary fighter, who also happens to be a Nazi collaborator.

"During World War II, Nzhdeh and his friend General Dro founded the infamous Armenian Legion, of approximately 30,000 men, who were made available to perpetrate Nazi atrocities. The Armenian Legion, as part of the German Wehrmacht, fought in the Crimean peninsula, the Caucasus, and Southern France, actively assisting the Nazis by rounding up Jews and other ‘undesirables’, as well as organized death marches of Jews to the ghastly concentration camps," the article says.

Furthermore, the article says Los Angeles City Council that includes Jewish members, should be concerned with the fact that the Nazi Nzhdeh and Dro are heralded as great Armenian heroes in Armenia.

"1.3 million out of 2.2 million adults in Armenia hold anti-Semitic beliefs, making Armenia the second most anti-Semitic country in Europe. In 2018, a Pew Research Center survey found that 32 percent of Armenians would not accept Jews as fellow citizens and that Armenia has a 'Jewish Problem'."

The Los Angeles based Jewish Journal magazine posted the article, according to which, since gaining its independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union, Armenia has pursued a foreign policy constantly contradicting the US in the South Caucasus region and international arena.

"Armenia regularly votes against the resolutions promoted by the US in international organizations, such as the one condemning the invasion of the Crimea, when Armenia was one of only 11 countries alongside North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Russia, Venezuela, and others rejecting this resolution. And one of the first actions Prime Minister Pashinyan took was to send an Armenian contingent to Syria to support Bashar Assad’s regime. Just a few weeks ago, Armenia sent another shipment to Damascus cementing its political, economic and military alliance with Russia, Iran and Syria," the article reads.

According to it, Armenia is also internationally known and condemned for its illegal military occupation of a large part of neighboring Azerbaijan.

"In the early 1990s, supported by powerful regional allies, Armenia managed to invade approximately 20% of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. United Nations Security Council condemned with four resolutions this illegal military occupation that was accompanied by massacres and total ethnic cleansing of the occupied lands of their indigenous Azerbaijani population (over 800,000 of them). Together with 250,000 Azerbaijani civilians expelled from Armenia, Azerbaijan accounts today over 1 million refugees on its soil, which is one of the largest refugee populations per capita in the world," JewishJournal says.