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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Tuesday 17 May 2005
ARMENIA: NOT ILLEGAL DEPORTATION, MERELY ILLEGAL REMOVAL
Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objector Armen Grigoryan faces a six year
jail sentence, after his illegal deportation from his own country,
Armenia, and his refusal to do military service in the unrecognised
Nagorno-Karabakh republic, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. But Armenia’s
Human Rights Ombudsperson, Larisa Alaverdyan, denied to Forum 18 that
Grigoryan had been deported. “You can’t call it illegal deportation
– there’s no such term. I’m a specialist on this. Perhaps it might
have been illegal removal from the country.” She defended what she
claimed was the right of the Armenian Defence Ministry to send Armenian
citizens to Nagorno-Karabakh, which international law regards as part of
Azerbaijan. Armenia continues to break its promises to the Council of
Europe to free conscientious objectors and introduce a civilian
alternative to military service, with both Baptists and Jehovah’s
Witnesses being beaten up and jailed for this.
ARMENIA: NOT ILLEGAL DEPORTATION, MERELY ILLEGAL REMOVAL
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objector Armen Grigoryan, illegally
deported from his Armenian homeland to the unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh
republic, is facing imprisonment of up to six years if found guilty of
desertion and refusing to perform his military duties, his lawyer Rustam
Khachatryan told Forum 18 News Service from the Armenian capital Yerevan
on 16 May. Mher Shageldyan, who chairs the Defence Committee of Armenia’s
parliament, said he was not familiar with the case, but would investigate.
“This is absolutely unreal,” he told Forum 18 on 17 May.
“No-one has the right to deport an Armenian citizen from Armenia
– that’s clear.”
However, Larisa Alaverdyan, Armenia’s Human Rights Ombudsperson, denied
that Grigoryan had been deported. “You can’t call it illegal
deportation – there’s no such term. I’m a specialist on this,”
she told Forum 18 from Yerevan on 17 May. “Perhaps it might have been
illegal removal from the country, I don’t know. We’ll have to seek official
information on this from the Ministry of Defence.”
She defended what she saw as the right of the Armenian defence ministry to
send Armenian citizens to Nagorno-Karabakh, which international law regards
as part of Azerbaijan. “It’s where the Armenian army serves so it has
every right to send personnel there.”
Grigoryan, who refused military service after being called up, was
summoned to the military recruitment office in Yerevan under a pretext on
21 June 2004. Within 24 hours and against his will he had been taken out
of Armenia and transferred to a military unit across the border in
Nagorno-Karabakh. On refusing to swear the military oath and sing the
national anthem for religious reasons at a base in Martuni region of
eastern Karabakh, he was beaten. He was later stripped and forced to stand
in his underwear in front of about 1,800 soldiers to tell them why he
refused to do military service. He escaped from his unit and fled back to
Armenia last August (see F18News 6 January 2005
).
Within the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the authorities have
beaten up and imprisoned Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses who have refused
on religious grounds to do military service with weapons (see F18News 6
January , 22 February
and 15 April 2005
=544).
Grigoryan’s lawyer, Rustam Khachatryan, told Forum 18 that Grigoryan
decided to give himself in and the two went to the police in Yerevan on 28
April. He was immediately arrested and taken to Stepanakert in
Nagorno-Karabakh, where he is being held in solitary confinement in an
investigation cell. A criminal case was instigated under Article 362(1) of
the Armenian criminal code, which punishes desertion with a prison term of
up to four years, and Article 364(1), which punishes refusal to perform
military duties with up to two years’ imprisonment. (Nagorno-Karabakh uses
Armenia’s criminal code.)
Khachatryan said the criminal case has been completed and Grigoryan’s
trial is due to start at Stepanakert city court on 27 May under Judge
Atayan. “The charges are baseless,” Khachatryan told Forum 18.
“The authorities deceived Grigoryan and took him to Nagorno-Karabakh
illegally. They don’t have the right to hold him, a citizen of Armenia,
and put him on trial.”
Khachatryan was sceptical about the claim of Mher Shahgeldyan, chairman of
the parliamentary Defence Committee, that he did not know about the case.
“The whole of Armenia knows about this case,” Khachatryan told
Forum 18.
Alaverdyan, the Human Rights Ombudsperson, insisted she has been in
frequent contact with Grigoryan’s father, who has visited her office
almost weekly. “At the father’s request we met the chief military
prosecutor and he declared that Grigoryan had refused military service
once he had already been conscripted,” she told Forum 18. “I
requested him to soften the penalty on human grounds in any way he
could.” She said she had been away since then and was not up to date
on the latest developments.
Despite commitments to the Council of Europe that it would end the
imprisonment of conscientious objectors and introduce a civilian
alternative to military service, Armenia has failed to do so (see F18News
19 October 2004 ).
Nineteen Jehovah’s Witnesses are still in prison for refusing military
service on grounds of conscience. Both of the alternative services
introduced in 2004 – non-combat military service and labour service
– are under the control of the defence ministry, and so do not meet
Armenia’s Council of Europe commitments. The alternative labour service is
punitive in length, three and a half years instead of two years normal
military service.
Of the 24 young men who opted for the alternative labour service last
year, 22 were Jehovah’s Witnesses who believed assurances by officials
that it was in fact civilian. Many have expressed concern about the terms
of the service. Vahe Grigoryan, Garazat Azatyan, Hayk Khachatryan and
Garik Melkonyan, who were assigned to Vardenis psychiatric hospital,
object particularly that they have to wear military-style uniforms, carry
identity cards marked “Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia”,
are regularly visited by military police and are given degrading work where
they are treated as soldiers. They are even fed by the military.
Some have now abandoned this alternative service, risking prosecution.
“My conscience would not permit me to continue under these
conditions,” one declared. When Narek Alaverdyan and Arsen Sevoyan,
refused to continue their alternative service on 6 May in Kapan they were
immediately arrested by the military police. Khachatryan told Forum 18 no
date has yet been set for their trial.
“It was under pressure from the Council of Europe that alternative
labour service was included into the law besides the military
alternative,” Avetik Ishkhanyan, who chairs the Armenian Helsinki
Committee, told the ArmeniaNow news website. “However, this is not a
civilian service and contradicts the European standards.” He says the
authorities are trying to cheat Europe by presenting military-controlled
labour service as civilian service.
Both Alaverdyan and Shahgeldyan deny this. “The law does provide for
civilian service,” Shahgeldyan told Forum 18 from the Armenian
parliament. “Since it was adopted some 25 or 30 religious and wider
pacifist objectors have begun performing this alternative service.”
He denied that those doing alternative service are under military control
and claimed that the military commissions that assign alternative service
conscripts to their places of work are made up solely of civilians.
But he insists parliament is going to look again at the alternative
service law in the light of concerns by non-governmental organisations to
see if it meets international standards. He gave no timescale for this.
Shahgeldyan told Forum 18 he knows that Armenia sentenced conscientious
objectors to prison before the alternative service law was introduced last
year. “This didn’t help the army or society,” he maintained.
However, he said he was unaware that 19 Jehovah’s Witnesses arrested both
before and after the adoption of the law are now in prison. He said he
would study a list of names sent to him by Forum 18.
Armenia’s failure to keep its promises to the Council of Europe to free
religious prisoners of conscience, imprisoned for conscientious objection,
continues. March 2005 saw five Jehovah’s Witnesses sentenced to between one
and two years in prison (see F18News 21 March 2005
), with two more jailed
in April.
Three Jehovah’s Witnesses have appealed to the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg against their earlier convictions for refusing
military service. In one case, that of Vahan Bayatyan who lodged his
application in October 2003, the Armenian government has to provide the
court with its written response to its questions on the case by 26 May.
A printer-friendly map of Armenia is available at
;Rootmap=armeni
and a printer-friendly map of the
disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is available at
;R ootmap=azerba
within the map titled ‘Azerbaijan’. (END)
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress