{"id":124382,"date":"2011-09-06T14:19:20","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T09:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=124382"},"modified":"2011-09-06T14:19:20","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T09:19:20","slug":"young-army-recruit-admitted-to-psych-ward-says-officers-beat-him-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/09\/06\/young-army-recruit-admitted-to-psych-ward-says-officers-beat-him-video.html","title":{"rendered":"Young Army Recruit Admitted to Psych Ward, Says Officers Beat Him (VIDEO)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In early August, Vardan Vardanyan received a call from one of his son&#8217;s friends in the army.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He was told that for the past 9 days, his son, Hovhannes Vardanyan, 19, who had already served 14 months of the mandatory 24 months in the army in the Nagorno-Karabakh province of Askeran, has been in the psychiatric ward in Yerevan.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The details of what happened are described in the 10-minute video below (in Armenian only) called &#8220;Hovhannes Vardanyan&#8217;s life after the army&#8221; and prepared by local youth civic initiative &#8220;We won&#8217;t be silent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The young man can be seen constantly pacing and citing the soldier&#8217;s oath, as well as repeating phrases such as &#8220;I give myself over to my homeland,&#8221; &#8220;I am subject to a 2-year service in the Republic of [Nagorno] Karabakh [armed] forces&#8221; and &#8220;Our president is my sanctuary&#8221; and &#8220;My sanctuary is our president&#8221; (continuing to praise the president).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kltNRmTe2TI?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After four minutes, a voice off-camera asks Hovhannes to describe what happened to him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; They wanted to hit me, rape me.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Who?<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The officers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Name names.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Volfogar. I don&#8217;t remember their names. Shalon.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the video, Hovhannes&#8217; father says in attempting to find out what happened, he called the regiment commander, introduced himself and asked where Hovhannes Vardanyan was. He said he didn&#8217;t know and hung up. The second time Hovhannes&#8217; father called him, the military official said you&#8217;ve called the wrong number and do not call this number again. For three days Hovhannes&#8217; father continued to call, but his calls went unanswered.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There has been no response to the family&#8217;s appeals from the defense ministry since Aug. 3, said Hovhannes&#8217; father.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>While his father spoke, Hovhannes (&#8220;Hovo&#8221;) took off his shirt, wrapping it around his neck, leapfrogged sideways on his hands and feet, calling himself a white eagle, dancing and juggling invisible objects.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the official version of events, Hovhannes&#8217; father said he was told his son was scared. &#8220;He served a year and two months and wasn&#8217;t scared and just now he got scared?&#8221; he said, adding that he received a call from Hovhannes&#8217; friends saying his son fought with a senior officer, then for a long time there were no calls and then a call that Hovhannes is in the psych ward \u2014 and this not from army officials, but from Hovhannes&#8217; friends.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hovhannes&#8217; father, when urged by the voice off-camera to explain the cause of his son&#8217;s state, said it was because of the fight and that his son was beaten, lifting Hovhannes&#8217; shirt and pointing to his son&#8217;s legs to show the traces of the beating on his back and legs.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hovhannes Vardanyan, 19, who had already served 14 months in the army in the Nagorno-Karabakh province of Askeran&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":124233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[65942,18419,31576,31574,31577,13901,31575],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124382"}],"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=124382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}