Mother of killed Armenian soldier refuses to send youngest son to army
By Rashid Shirinov
The national army is the place hated by all Armenian parents, who have son, as they are aware of those terrible conditions, under which the Armenian soldiers have to serve for two years.
Alongside the poor infrastructure in the Armenian military units, soldiers have to endure constant violence, bullying and humiliation. Therefore, mothers are afraid of sending their sons to serve in the Armenian army.
One of them is Anahit Harutyunyan, the mother of Grigor Harutyunyan, who was declared missing during the four-day Karabakh fighting in April 2016. She refuses to let her second son, her only breadwinner, to serve in the Armenian army.
Before the recruitment of Anahit’s son Seryozha for the army service, she appealed to the recruiting office in Yerevan with the request to release her son from service.
“They called me and demanded some documents proving that over the last ten years my sons Grigor and Seryozha were my caretakers, and after Grigor’s death only Seryozha takes care of me,” Anahit told nt.am. She also noted her problems with blood pressure.
The woman submitted all necessary documents to the recruiting office, and then they were sent to the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces. Later, chief of the General Staff Movses Hakobyan responded saying that Anahit’s son might get a reprieve.
“Our recruiting office submitted all the documents to the Yerevan City Hall, which did not refuse and assured me that there will be a reprieve,” says Anahit.
However, the woman says, on July 31, she suddenly received a call from the recruiting office and was told that the Defense Minister of Armenia did not approve the statement of reprieve. Thus, Seryozha Harutyunyan will be called for service in the Armenian army.
On the same day, the woman went to the recruiting office and wrote a statement about refusal of letting her son go to serve in army.
“The defense minister should come forward and release my son from the service, given the fact that he has no father, we live in difficult social conditions, he is the brother of the deceased soldier and is the sole caretaker of his sick mother,” Anahit said. “They will take Seryozha to the army only over my dead body!”
Armenia’s Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan had earlier made a public statement, saying that the ministry will always support the families of the deceased Armenian soldiers. However, it turns out that the minister, as usual, lied.
Frequent death cases, violence, brutality, and non-obedience reign in the Armenian army for many years. Parents do not want to send their sons to serve in army, they are afraid of receiving their dead bodies due to the mess in the Armenian army. Therefore, parents try to find any opportunity to keep their sons far from that horror. Many youth flee abroad so that not to serve in the army.
However, majority of Armenian families are powerless against the government. Thus, more and more soldiers die in the Armenian army, and most of them are from poor families.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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