In response to the public outcry to recent incidents in the Armenian army, a group of concerned persons, along with the mothers of the young conscripts killed while not in combat, will be staging a peaceful protest outside the government building in Yerevan’s Republic Square on Sept. 1 at 11 am.<\/p>\n
Organizers encourage members of the public to join them and to come dressed in black.<\/p>\n
“The purpose of the protest is to call on President [Serzh] Sargsyan and Defense Minister [Seyran] Ohanyan to stop human rights abuses within the ranks of the Armenian military and to demand an immediate, fair, and transparent investigation of the deaths in the military.<\/p>\n
“The most recent cases are Aghasi Abrahamyan, 18, who was brutally killed on August 26 at the military unit of Yeghnikner, Karabakh, after 9 months of service. Two weeks before this, Vardan Sevyan, 19, was killed at the military unit of Goris. In 2011, already 19 deaths have been registered in the military. There [are] no available statistics about the number of violence, rapes, young people becoming disabled after the military service,” reads the statement by organizers on the event’s Facebook page<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n As reported earlier<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, another Facebook event page<\/span><\/strong><\/a> has been created to gather donations on Sept. 3 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm near Tamamyan’s statue at Yerevan’s famed Cascade to assist Vardan Sevyan’s family. While yet another Facebook page<\/strong><\/span><\/a> was created seeking answers regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of Aghasi Abrahamyan<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n “Continuously learning of such deplorable events, Armenian youth hesitate to serve in the national army. For many, this uncertainty turns into fear, and fear is a soldier’s first enemy,” reads the Facebook page creators’ statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In response to the public outcry to recent incidents in the Armenian army, a group of concerned persons, along with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":120696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[31244,65942,12009,18419,31245,10355],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}