Armenia: lawyers and rights defenders offer to establish the institute of Military Ombudsperson

As believed by the participants of the conference "Situation in the Armenian Army", the establishment of the institute of Military Ombudsperson can improve the situation in the Armed Forces of Armenia.

As noted at the conference "Situation in the Armenian Army" held in Yerevan today by Arsen Kharatyan, a member of the initiative group "Army in Reality", its aim is to identify the reasons of the situation in the armed forces, when the death toll of servicemen reached the threatening and horrifying scale.

According to his story, the civil society and state structures should work as a united front to address these problems.

In the opinion of Arthur Sakunts, the head of the Vanadzor Office of Helsinki Civil Assembly, human rights violations in the army are frequent and known to everybody.

"However, the protests that started on August 26 have shown that we do not want to tolerate this phenomenon," the rights defender has noted.

He has added that violations begin during the call-up period and continue through and after the regular service.

According to his story, Armenia is still running the Soviet system of armed forces, where the emphasis is not on ensuring high-quality military service but on achieving the target numerical indicators.

Among other important issues in the Armed Forces, Mr Sakunts noted the problem of corruption. According to his version, involvement of the military command in business projects keeps them away from due fulfilment of their duties.

In order to address these and many other army problems, the human rights activist considers it necessary to establish the institute of Military Ombudsperson.

This opinion is shared by Richard Kirakosyan, the head of the Centre for Regional Studies. According to his story, the institute of Military Ombudsperson will ensure a higher level of solving the army problems.

Besides, Mr Kirakosyan has offered to form new mechanisms allowing to publicly disclose the situation, incidents, and the work to reveal and investigate them. He also suggested to found a retraining institute for sergeants and officers and to adopt a general code of discipline with the rules of conduct and ethics of the militaries.

In his turn, the lawyer Vage Grigoryan has noted that one solution to these problems is in depoliticization of the army and ensuring political neutrality.

He sees another way out of this situation in a transition to a contract-based army or recruitment of women. According to Mr Grigoryan, the painful situation in the army could have easily arisen because of the same-sex communication. Involvement of women, according to the lawyer, can significantly improve the situation in a positive way.

Meanwhile, Armenian lawyers exclude any possibility of objective investigation into the army killings.

According to their words, from the very beginning preliminary investigation of a number of cases is conducted with gross violations.

As noted by the lawyer Seda Safaryan, advocates often face problems, when they try to study the situation.

"Very often, a lawyer just cannot get to the scene to examine the details of the incident and identify its reasons," she said.

She also drew attention to the fact that after every such incident, investigators characterize it as suicide, without making any examinations.

The lawyer Musheg Shushanyan believes that the problem may be somehow solved, if such incidents will be investigated not by the investigatory service of the Ministry of Defence, but by independent structures.