
Opinion | Armenia’s conscription reforms codify class division
By allowing the rich to skip military service, the government is undermining the principles of social justice and equality that brought them to power.
By allowing the rich to skip military service, the government is undermining the principles of social justice and equality that brought them to power.
The proposal, which was made by an MP from the ruling Civil Contract party, is said to have been greenlit by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Human rights activist Zaruhi Hovhannisyan has slammed the Deputy Chair of the Armenian Parliament’s Defence Committee, Armen Khachatryan, for attempting to downplay the responsibility of the authorities in the non-combat deaths of soldiers. ‘In our civilian life, we have many suicides, we have many accidents. I don’t know why you don’t talk about it, the reasons for those suicides’, Khachatryan said on Tuesday, in response to a question regarding the recent death of a soldier outside of comba
Georgia’s defence code is stamping out loopholes that young Georgians use to get out of military service, as rights activists in the country warn that new amendments to the code could lead to discrimination against religious minorities. This week, we spoke to a Georgian student about why he chose to evade conscription, to Ioseb Edisherashvili from the Georgian Young Lawyers Association about the controversy surrounding the defence code, and to Giorgi Shaishmelashvili, the
Georgia’s parliamentary majority has amended the country’s defence code, closing loopholes allowing conscientious objectors and long-distance students to defer their military service. Thursday’s amendments revoked exemption from military service for students enrolled in full-time distance study, as well as complicating a process used by conscientious objectors to immediately defer their service. This follows the introduction of a new defence code in September, which removed exemptions for al
The Armenian Ministry of Defence has put forward proposals to allow conscripts to avoid most of their military service in exchange for ֏24 million ($61,000). The bill, which was submitted for public debate on Wednesday, would allow wealthier Armenians to serve for just 4.5 months, instead of the usual two years. The ministry explained that the ‘logic’ behind the move was that ֏24 million would be enough to pay a contract soldier ֏400,000 ($1,000) per month for five years. The ministry sa
An 18-year-old ethnic Yazidi man has claimed he was abused immediately upon being conscripted into the Armenian armed forces. On 2 February, relatives of Vle Feroyan appealed to the public after they said they had lost contact with him. Feroyan contacted them the following day and said he had escaped to a nearby forest and would return home, after being beaten and forced to clean a toilet. The commander of the Kapan military unit, where Feroyan was serving, denied the allegations. He said Fe