Army Victim of Gangster Ideology that has Permeated Society

“Allowing us to speak about the army, we all give rise to Armenia’s Supreme Commander’s disgust, but somehow we will endure it,” said Sardarapat movement member Tigran Khzmalyan at a meeting today on the topic of “Recent incidents in the RA Armed Forces.”

Khzmalyan considers officials’ statements that one cannot criticize the army to be wrong.

“This is not a way to justify [oneself], those who think like this are sadly mistaken,” he said. 

The key to the army’s and the public’s health and resolving problems Khzmalyan considers to be the traditional Armenian family, which, according to him, hasn’t perished.

“We, not having a state, exist as a family. For this reason, we have to take care of our families. In each Armenian family, there is at least one person that has a connection with the army,” he said. 

“How did we get here?” he asked, then listed the circumstances, in his opinion, that led to the situation.

“In 1996, the government used force on its people for the first time. Following that were the incidents of Oct. 27, 1999 [i.e. the Armenian parliamentary shooting]. And here we had March. 1, 2008, where the government and the army came out against the people. The March 1 army became the police,” said Khzmalyan. 

“The army is a prison, a police division, a gang, because a gangster ideology has developed in our society. The state and the army are victims of this ideology,” he concluded.