{"id":271642,"date":"2016-03-14T17:16:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T13:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=271642"},"modified":"2016-03-14T17:16:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-14T13:16:25","slug":"military-service-in-armenia-should-be-optional-sakunts-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2016\/03\/14\/military-service-in-armenia-should-be-optional-sakunts-says.html","title":{"rendered":"Military Service in Armenia Should Be Optional, Sakunts Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">In Armenia, people&#39;s personal beliefs, philosophical views, or their call of conscience do not warrant their exemption from mandatory military service, Helsinki Citizen Assembly Vanadzor office head Artur Sakunts said during a Monday discussion on the Armenian law On Alternative Service.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;While it&#39;s true that there has been some change with regard to alternative service since 2004-2013 &#8211; Jehovah&#39;s Witnesses have been given the right to alternative service &ndash; however, a number of pressing issues are still there and remain unresolved. Namely, while serving in the army, one is not allowed to apply for exemption. That is, a person cannot change his beliefs during [the two years of mandatory service]. This is a gross violation [of human rights]. Military service should be optional; a citizen has only one obligation to the country &ndash; paying taxes,&rdquo; Sakunts stated.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe human rights activist pointed out that members of the clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church have inexplicable advantages over other soldiers; the army even pays clergymen salary based on the fact that they are conducting a &ldquo;spiritual service.&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;It&#39;s unclear, however, why they should &nbsp;be favoured over, say, representatives of the Protestant Church. We do, after all, have a secular and not a religious state,&rdquo; Sakunts said.<\/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>The human rights activist pointed out that members of the clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church have inexplicable advantages over other soldiers; the army even pays clergymen salary based on the fact that they are&#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":271639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10329,18552,64204,26139],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271642"}],"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=271642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}