PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE
by Emil Danielyan

Transitions Online, Czech Republic
March 13 2006

Young men refusing to serve in the armed forces for religious reasons
are again being prosecuted in Armenia, despite the introduction
nearly two years ago of a legal alternative to compulsory military
service. Conscientious objectors, mainly Jehovah’s Witnesses, are
refusing to enlist for alternative civilian service on the grounds
that it is controlled by the Armenian military. About 50 of them are
currently in jail or are awaiting trial.

Local and international human rights organizations have long criticized
the authorities in Yerevan for jailing conscientious objectors. In
2001, the Council of Europe made elimination of the practice a key
condition for admitting Armenia as a member. However, an Armenian
law on alternative service that came into force in July 2004 has so
far failed to address the problem. Council of Europe officials say
it does not fully meet European standards and should be amended.

The law gave male citizens who refuse mandatory military service
two options: to perform noncombat duties inside army bases for three
years or to spend three and a half years at civilian institutions.

After the law came into force, 22 Jehovah’s Witnesses opted for
the latter option and were assigned to special civilian hospitals,
including Armenia’s largest psychiatric clinic. But they soon
discovered that these facilities are essentially under military
control – the workers were regularly checked on by military police
officers, confined to the medical institutions for 24 hours a day,
and even fed by the army.

‘NOT AN OPTION’

“For young Jehovah’s Witnesses, to be attached to the military in any
form is impossible because that means cooperating with the military,”
said Andre Carbonneau, a Canadian lawyer representing the Jehovah’s
Witnesses in Armenia. That, he added, would run counter to one of
the main tenets of the U.S.-based Christian sect.

That also explains why all 22 men abandoned their places of service
before being arrested in August. Thirteen of the objectors were
tried and controversially sentenced to between two and three years’
imprisonment under articles of the Armenian Criminal Code that deal
with desertion from military units. The court sentences occurred before
the authorities enacted a law in January that declared abandonment
of civilian service a crime punishable by imprisonment.

According to Carbonneau, this constitutes a retroactive enforcement
of the law, illegal under Armenia’s constitution. Acting on the
attorney’s complaint, an Armenian appeals court recently overturned
virtually all of the Jehovah’s Witness convictions by lower courts.

However, it stopped short of ordering the release of the conscientious
objectors, only sending their cases back to prosecutors. The latter
are refusing to set the men free, pending another trial.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have responded by lodging an appeal to
the European Court of Human Rights, which they hope will order the
release of the men, the only Armenians to date to perform alternative
service. But Carbonneau admitted that there is little they can do about
nearly 30 other Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused outright to perform
military-controlled civilian duty after the alternative service law
came into force. They are now being kept in pretrial detention. “The
law on alternative service is not an option for any conscientious
objector,” he said.

Council of Europe bodies monitoring Armenia’s compliance with the
country’s membership obligations appear to share this view. “The
Council of Europe and its monitoring mechanisms consider that the
commitments in this area have not fully been met with the current
legislation,” the head of the Strasbourg-based organization’s Yerevan
office, Bojana Urumova, told EurasiaNet. Urumova said it should be
amended “in a way which will meet European standards and resolve
this issue definitely.” Armenian authorities have to come up with a
“genuine civilian alternative to military service,” she added.

OBJECTS OF SUSPICION

The Armenian government, meanwhile, has drafted amendments to the law
on alternative service that will be debated by parliament later this
year. With government officials refusing to disclose the amendments’
content for the moment, it is not clear whether they will satisfy the
Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Armenian military has always feared that
alternative service could serve as a legal loophole for mass draft
evasion; hence, its desire to strictly regulate the process. In
a December 2004 directive, the chief of the Armenian army staff,
Col.-Gen. Mikael Harutiunian, ordered military officials to regularly
report to him about civilian compliance with regulations that, among
other things, require them to stay in their place of service 24 hours
a day and take leaves of absence only with official permission.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have long been viewed with suspicion by the
authorities and a large part of Armenia’s population, primarily due to
their strong opposition to military service. Many Armenian politicians
and ordinary people alike consider their pacifist doctrine a serious
threat to the national security of a country locked in a bitter
territorial conflict with one of its neighbors, Azerbaijan. The sect
had for years been denied official registration for that reason.

The government formally legalized it only in October 2004, in a move
that was condemned by the Armenian Apostolic Church. “The activities of
totalitarian religious organizations, including Jehovah’s Witnesses,
run counter to our national and state interests and aspirations,”
the church, to which over 90 percent of Armenians around the world
nominally belong, said in a statement issued at the time.

In the words of Tigran Harutiunian, a Jehovah’s Witness spokesman in
Armenia, apart from the renewed prosecution of its young male members,
the religious group has faced no government restrictions since then
and currently boasts more than 20,000 Armenian adherents.

“We are happy to be able to freely talk about our faith,” he said.