Commander killed my son for $100 USD, says an Armenian mother

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 Mkrtchyan, the mother of Araik Avetisyan, who was killed in the army, told Tert.am.

Anahit Mkrtchyan 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.