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On February 1, the NKR Defense Ministry made a statement that the “invalid” notes in the military IDs of the servicemen who took part in the 4-day April war “are conditioned by the negligent omissions by relevant officer of the military unit in question.”

In its interview with human rights activists, ‘Hayastan24’ tried to find out how reasonable such an explanation of the country’s defense department was.

Human rights activist Artur Sakunts, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor, not only does not consider reasonable such a reaction from the NKR Defense Ministry, but also assesses it as inadequate.

“I find it strange that the RA Defense Ministry keeps silent as the matter concerns recording the fact that persons took part in military operations and I consider “editing” such a fact not only morally unacceptable, but also immoral. This also concerns falsifying history as those documents are also documentary items. It is the historic documentation that is falsified,” the human rights activist told in the interview.

“On the other hand, I think burdening the entire blame on the commanders’ shoulders is a forgery as the commanders of those military units or the persons responsible for personal files there have absolutely no vital personal interest in “editing” or falsifying such a fact. This resulted from the relevant instruction and those who gave such an instruction simply thought that people might keep silent once again about the forgery, but it was not the case and the forgery was revealed”, Artur Sakunts added stressing that apart form the moral aspect of the problem, there is another one, the financial one.

“That historical documentation of the fact of taking part in military operations, entailed certain social benefits by law for which the state had to and still must make financial investments. Such investments will be made both to solve various problems and to ensure the privileges prescribed by law. And here we can see an interesting fact that the author of the nation-army concept, remains absolutely silent about the phenomenon he once seemed to advocate for. The ‘1000 AMD’ concept seemed to entail compensations for human investment and this shows that we rather witness some kind of show populist in nature and with only an insignificant political aim. That decision did not result from the concern to solve the problems of the people but only aimed to solve the financial problem. A person must not die or perish to get any compensation”, the Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor said stressing that such practices showed absolute irresponsibility towards RA citizens.

“I consider it immoral and inhuman treatment to people just visiting military units during the call-ups, expressing concerns about proper organization of the call-up, taking pictures and boosting one’s own image to show the importance of one’s own self and at the same time showing absolute irresponsibility towards those persons. I urge all the servicemen, who took part in the military operations or were on combat duty on April 2-5 and executed military orders, to stand for their rights, speak out and contact us if in need of support”, the human rights activist summed up pointing out the need to restore the historical and social justice.

Human rights activist Zhanna Alexanyan, Chairperson of ‘Journalists for Human Rights’ NGO, also stated that this was a rather shameful issue.

“The talks on military IDs were still circulated for over 2 weeks and Vigen Sargsyan was also aware of them as he answered that question at a press conference and said that the problem would be examined. How could the issue persisting for 2 weeks result from misunderstanding? So, why didn’t Vigen Sargsyan say then that it was a misunderstanding but said instead that they would study the problem and have been doing so for 2 weeks. The question is: how can servicemen be humiliated? I think that when the servicemen noticed the noise about the issue, they started to voice it themselves and this is indeed a shameful thing. The Defense Ministry tried to get out of the situation in this way. This is just an excuse and quite a failed one,” Zhanna Alexanyan said.

We also asked our interlocutor to explain why it was the NKR Defense Ministry that issued communication on the military IDs, whereas the Armenian Defense Ministry keeps silent. The human rights activist expressed the opinion below:

“By internal order, they instructed the NKR Defense Ministry to make that statement. The RA Defense Ministry and Minister Vigen Sargsyan were very well aware of what was happening and allowed it to continue. As the servicemen served in Nagorno-Karabakh and the military operations took place there, it was the NKR Defense Army that gave explanations, but almost all of them are citizens of Republic of Armenia. The Defense Ministry tried, so to speak, to “get out of the situation”. This is a very shameful act humiliating our young heroes and disappointing others. So didn’t those young men deserve any privilege? They risked their life to protect the border,” our interlocutor concluded.

N.B. Note that on February 1, the Human Rights Defender received a number of servicemen and their families. He examined the documents provided by them in connection with the failure to make notes on their participation in military operations, making notes “invalid” or deleting those notes and discussed details of the problem.

Hayastan24.com