COMMANDER KILLED MY SON FOR $100 USD, SAYS AN ARMENIAN MOTHER
Tert.am
09.09.10
The square in front of Armenia’s Government Building was again full
of people this morning that had come with the hope to get answers to
their appeals.
Some of them were citizens who wanted had invested their savings
in the banks and lost it after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
but some of them were mothers whose sons had been killed while doing
their military service in the army.
“It is the commander of the battalion who killed my son for $100 USD.
This state does not want to accept that soldiers are being killed
in the army for not taking money [to their commander]. My son took
a leave and came home and returned without money, and here is the
result,” Anahit Lazarian, the mother of Araik Avetisyan, who was
killed in the army, told Tert.am.
Anahit Lazarian requires that the person who killed her son to be
held responsible.
Gohar Sargsyan, another mother of a soldier (Tigran Ohanjanyan)
killed in the army in 2007, said that there would not be fresh
killings in the army today, should the person killing her son had
been held accountable.
“Why are they defending the assassins, what is the reason? Today
genocide is being perpetrated in the army. [The Defense] minister
is said to have a good personality, but why doesn’t he control the
situation in the army as a minister?” said he.
Most of those parents losing sons in the army are in the opinion that
it is due to the atmosphere of impunity that such incidents occur in
the army.
Earlier on Wednesday another incident was reported this time in
the military unit in Vaiq where Arthur Hakobyan, a contract junior
sergeant allegedly committed suicide.
Two other similar incidents in the previous months this summer left
at least 7 dead.
From: A. Papazian