"AUTHORITIES SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT LOSS OF EVERY SERVICEMAN IS MISCHIEF," PARENTS OF SERVICEMEN FALLEN VICTIM IN ARMY SAY

Noyan Tapan
Aug 2, 2007

YEREVAN, AUGUST 1, NOYAN TAPAN. As far as the Armenian authorities
do not accept that the loss of every serviceman is a mischief,
the army cannot become stable. This point of view was expressed
by Gohar Armenakian, the mother of a killed serviceman, during the
discussion of the parents of the dead servicemen, which was held on
August 1. According to her, most of the murders committed in the army
are requalified as suicides and the real criminals remain under the
patronage of high ranking officials.

Avetik Ishkhanian, the Chairman of the Helsinki Committee, mentioned
that "there is a problem of transparency" with regard to information
concerning cases of death-rate of servicemen. For example, according to
him, there are four different official data concerning the number of
the dead servicemen in Armenia in 2005: according to the information
provided by the "Human rights watch" international organization,
12 servicemen died in the above-mentioned period, according to
the statement of the RA Ministry of Defense, there were 89 killed
servicemen, and according to the data of the Military Prosecutor’s
Office, the number made 28. In the words of A. Ishkhanian, Serge
Sargsian, the former RA Minister of Defense, declared that the number
of the dead servicemen in the Armed Forces made 47 in 2005.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress