‘April War’ in Karabakh Apparently Had No Participants: Press

In the military cards of recently demobilized Armenian soldiers, there is no mention of them having participated in the four days of intense fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh last April, while in the card of one of the soldiers who served those days in a military unit in Mataghis, the corresponding record has been painted over with a white marker; the young man thus has no way to prove that he was in Mataghis during the “four-day war,” Hraparak newspaper writes, stressing that several demobilized soldiers have appealed to the paper with a similar issue.

According to Hraparak, the Nagorno-Karabakh defense ministry has issued a secret order not to leave any records indicating about the April events or the soldiers’ participation in them in the demobilized servicemen’s documents.

As a result, for example, the soldiers who went back to university after demobilization are now deprived of the chance to get the 50 percent tuition discount promised to participants of the April fighting.

Hraparak contacted Senor Hasratyan, the spokesperson for the NKR ministry of defense, who said that the military authorities were aware of the soldiers’ dissatisfaction. At the same time, Hasratyan stressed that he was not the one issuing decisions and urged the newspaper’s reporter to directly contact the defense ministry. To the correspondent’s remark that the demobilized soldiers have many other complaints which they are afraid to speak out about, Hasratyan replied; “Well, then, that’s how a cowardly person is supposed to live, I guess.”