GRIEVING MOTHERS PROTEST IN FRONT OF GOV HOUSE IN YEREVAN

Tert.am
16:37 06.05.10

A group of Armenian women whose sons had been killed while doing
their temporary service in the army gathered today near the Government
House on the Republican square in downtwon Yerevan.

Holding the photos of their slain sons they were demanding to bring
those guilty to justice.

The police officers were constantly asking them to show respect
towards them and not to shout – yet to little avail.

"How can we respect you when our sons have cemetries. Return them. We
have cemeteries but we have no one guilty, we have lost the meaning
of our life," here and there the women could be hears shouting.

The mother of one of the soldiers, Araik Avetisyan who was killed in
2001, said she believed that her son was killed by the commander of
the battalion where he was doing his military service.

"It is already nine year that I wake up and think that the commander
of the battalion killed my son and is now laughing at me. Genocide
is being perpetrated in the military units," she said.

The mother of Tigran Ohanjanyan, killed in one of Vardenis-located
military units in 2007, said that if the commander were punished for
the crime he committed, there would be no such further crimes in the
army and they would not have lose their sons.