Mother of Deceased Soldier Asks Seyran Ohanyan to Cleanse Army or ‘Kill Yourself’

Hasmik Hovhannisyan, the mother of Lieutenant Artak Nazaryan, who was serving in Armenia’s armed forces when he died rather suddenly on June 27 in No. 21177 military base in Tavush marz (province), has sent an open letter to RA Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan.

In the letter, the mother of the deceased writes that the official cause of her son’s death — suicide — cannot be true. She notes that her son believed in God, had a priest he made confessions to, and was a Holy Trinity brotherhood member prior to the defense ministry’s call to serve in the armed forces. 

“For him, divine laws had become blood and bone, and he clearly knew that not only is murder a sin, but that suicide, that greatest share of sin will be horrible. I know, to you it’s ridiculous to speak of high spiritual values,” writes Hovhannisyan in the letter.

“They killed on a thought-out, cold-hearted calculation. They eliminated the light, good and honest, interfering in their path. Such animals are evil and birth an atmosphere of impunity. They are not ordinary murderers, they are traitors to the homeland, who brutally kill on the borders and destroy the border officer…

“… you don’t know by whose command, they attempt to defend the obvious murder from the start by inserting it under the veil of ‘suicide.’ Those, who work toward this direction, deliberately distort the facts, as if in the name of the Armenian army…; they are also traitors to the nation and the homeland and with that, they are further tainting the army’s honor, by placing stigma of blood and disgrace on the army’s and its leadership’s forehead,” it reads in the letter.

Hovhannisyan notes that the only way to cleanse the blood, disgrace and shame is to undergo a just and fair investigation, which from the beginning has been taking place with horrible shortcomings, which she describes in detail in her open letter.

“Mr. Minister, why you, who is the head of the entire [military] system, even though they say about you that you are a weak minister, and that nothing depends on you, [why] don’t you want to scrape, clean the blood and dirt on the army and the system, to truly punish the guilty? If that is outside of your abilities, then you, like my son, can ‘kill yourself’ and leave a real post, that as a high-ranking military official, you are ashamed of having such a corrupted Armenian army…” wrote Hovhannisyan.

“During a time of war, traitors to the homeland were shot,” reads the last line in the letter.