FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief

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Thursday 6 January 2005
NAGORNO-KARABAKH: DID ARMENIAN PRIEST BEAT BAPTIST CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR?

An Armenian Apostolic Church military chaplain, Fr Petros Yezegyan, has
vehemently denied to Forum 18 News Service that he beat up a Baptist, Gagik
Mirzoyan, who refused on religious grounds to do military service in the
unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh republic’s army. Fr Yezegyan admitted talking
to Mirzoyan for some hours, and Baptist sources have told Forum 18 that
“for the final hour and a half the priest beat the brother so badly
that blood flowed from his nose and mouth”. Baptists have also stated
that this was the second beating Mirzoyan received, the first being by a
unit commander who assaulted him after he refused to abandon his faith and
to serve in the army. Relatives have been refused information on where
Mirzoyan currently is, and the Defence Ministry would only tell Forum 18
that he “is still alive.”

NAGORNO-KARABAKH: DID ARMENIAN PRIEST BEAT BAPTIST CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR?

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service

Armenian Apostolic military chaplain Fr Petros Yezegyan has vigorously
denied Baptist claims that he beat church member Gagik Mirzoyan for his
refusal to swear the military oath and put on uniform after being called up
to military service in the army of the unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic. “I did not beat him – that is a lie,” Fr Yezegyan told
Forum 18 News Service from the region on 4 January. “Why are the
Baptists saying this?” The priest admitted he spoke to Mirzoyan for
some hours on 25 December about his faith and why he was refusing military
service, but local Baptists told Forum 18 on 3 January that “for the
final hour and a half the priest beat the brother so badly that blood
flowed from his nose and mouth”. When Mirzoyan told Fr Yezegyan he
would lodge a complaint, the Baptists say the priest responded: “You
won’t get anywhere.”

Leaping to Fr Yezegyan’s defence was the Armenian Apostolic archbishop of
Karabakh, Parkev Martirosyan. “I don’t believe he could have beaten
anyone, that’s absurd,” he told Forum 18 from the town of Shusha near
the capital Stepanakert on 4 January. “Had he done so it would be a
very serious issue which would go straight to the head of the Church, the
Catholicos.”

The Baptists told Forum 18 that this was the second beating Mirzoyan
received since being called up on 6 December. They report that one of the
unit’s commanders assaulted him on 15 December after he rejected attempts
to pressure him to abandon his faith and to serve in the army.

No official would give Forum 18 the contact number for Lieutenant-Colonel
Armen Seiranyan, the commander of the education unit in the town of
Khodjali near Stepanakert where the Baptists say the beatings took place.

The republic’s Defence Ministry refused all comment on Mirzoyan’s case.
Andreas (last name unknown), the duty officer who answered the telephone at
the ministry on 4 January, consulted with colleagues before declining
comment and refused to transfer the call to any other department of the
ministry. On repeated questioning from Forum 18, the officer said only that
Mirzoyan is still alive, but declined to say where he is being held. He
also declined to say what would now happen to him.

Mirzoyan’s relatives tried to visit him at the education unit on 31
December, but found he was no longer there. They told Forum 18 they
received “no clear reply” to their questions as to where he had
been transferred. Fr Yezegyan told Forum 18 Mirzoyan had been moved to
another unit, but declined to say which one or whether he was in hospital
or in prison.

The Baptists added that the local post office refused to accept a telegram
to the Defence Ministry from Mirzoyan’s mother about the assaults on her
son.

Andreas of the defence ministry insisted that all young men in Karabakh
must serve in the armed force with no exceptions. “Anyone who refuses
to swear the oath and take up weapons is a traitor and should be
sentenced,” he told Forum 18 from Stepanakert. “It is clear they
will be sentenced.”

Such a view was backed by Archbishop Martirosyan. “It is the law of
the state that everyone must join the army. Everyone must abide by the
law,” he told Forum 18. “Nagorno-Karabakh is a war-zone,” he
added, referring to the unresolved dispute between the largely ethnic
Armenian population of Karabakh and the Azerbaijani authorities, who fought
a bitter war from 1989 to 1994 for control of the territory. “Armenia
has adopted a law on alternative service but there isn’t such a law here.
Given the continuing state of war, I don’t think such a law is appropriate
here.”

But Nagorno-Karabakh’s deputy foreign minister Masis Mailyan, disagreed,
insisting that Armenia’s alternative service law also applied in the
region. “Laws on subjects that form part of Armenia’s obligations
under the Council of Europe also extend to the Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic,” he told Forum 18 from Stepanakert on 5 January. But he
insisted that the Karabakh armed forces remain under local control, not
under control from Armenia. Mailyan said he had no information on
Mirzoyan’s case but promised to find out more.

Fr Yezegyan told Forum 18 that in the wake of Mirzoyan’s refusal to serve
he had been brought in “as a military priest” at the request of
the Defence Ministry “to find out to what faith he belonged”. He
said that in their long conversation, he had explained “a lot” to
Mirzoyan. “He’s not a Baptist – he’s just pretending,” the priest
said of Mirzoyan. “He’s not a believer in the way he should be. A real
believer does not act against the state.” He insisted that Mirzoyan
– and other young Karabakhis – should “take up arms, fight
the enemy and defend the fatherland”.

Fr Yezegyan – a citizen of Armenia – maintained that he had the
right to expound his views in the army of Nagorno-Karabakh as he had been
sent by the military chaplains’ department at the headquarters of the
Armenian Church at Echmiadzin in Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been under martial law since 1992. The presidential
decree imposing martial law – renewed annually by the parliament in
Stepanakert – imposes restrictions on civil liberties, including
banning the activity of “religious sects and unregistered
organisations”, banning demonstrations and imposing media
censorship.

Officials maintain that only “registered organisations” are
allowed to hold meetings, while Karabakh’s 1997 religion law requires
religious groups to gain registration before they can function. Among
religious communities, only the Armenian Apostolic Church –
effectively Karabakh’s state church – has such registration with the
local justice ministry.

Mirzoyan’s congrgation – which belongs to the Council of Churches
Baptists, who refuse on principle to register with the state authorities in
post-Soviet countries – has faced repeated harassment from the
Karabakh authorities. In the latest incident, the local police raided the
Stepanakert church last September, confiscating religious literature and
questioning church members (see F18News 27 September 2004
).

Other faiths – including Pentecostal Christians and Jehovah’s
Witnesses – have faced problems operating in Karabakh, though
pressures have generally eased in recent years.

A printer-friendly map of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is
available at
;Rootmap=azerba
within the map titled ‘Azerbaijan’.
(END)

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