{"id":283421,"date":"2018-01-30T16:48:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T12:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am?p=283421"},"modified":"2020-05-11T16:25:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T12:25:45","slug":"suicide-soldier-and-real-army-stories-from-former-soldiers-anti-militarist-action-held-in-yerevan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2018\/01\/30\/suicide-soldier-and-real-army-stories-from-former-soldiers-anti-militarist-action-held-in-yerevan.html","title":{"rendered":"Suicide Soldier and Real Army Stories from Former Soldiers: Anti-Militarist Action Held in Yerevan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Several anti-militarist actions were held in Yerevan following the celebrations of the Armenian Army Day on January 28. In addition to surveys about military service conducted on the city streets and in social networks, the anonymous organizers also distributed stencils depicting a suicide soldier, leaflets with official statistics of combat and non-combat casualties, and excerpts from real stories of former soldiers:<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a 2-week newbie; someone threw himself out of a window and broke his legs. They said he would be put on trial and that he had gotten the entire unit into trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a guy nicknamed Tevqash in our unit. He had shot himself on the shoulder the first time he was taken to combat positions. They tried to make it look like an accident so that he wouldn\u2019t be put on trial. Didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a guy from Tashir who\u2019d always run away and take the highway to home until they caught him and brought him back. Once I told him to stop running away, otherwise his commander would be jailed. They took him to a madhouse after the oath-taking ceremony. No one would say anything to him after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a kid nicknamed Spitak at our position. A really smart kid. He\u2019s nearly shoot people everytime he cleaned his weapon. To think about it, maybe he was doing it on purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were only scared of penetration attempts and routine check ups.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a contract Sergeant named Mkho. He had bought an Opel. He\u2019d say he\u2019d move to Russia once his contract was up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce two Turks from the Gogveli position came out and began waving at me, so I waved back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a Sako with us at our position. Once I drew a gun on him, wanted to kill him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me tell you something: it\u2019s far better to be at a combat position than in a unit. At least there\u2019s some point to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had this guy Tashir at our position; his weapon was a PK [machine gun]. One time he began actively shooting towards an Azeri village. I ran to him and began cursing him, and he replied: \u2018Let me kill on Azeri so that they give me a vacation.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was this guy from Yerevan, Burnachyan. They framed him, so he robbed the teahouse to pay the debt. So then they jailed him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The activists, citing Armenian and Azerbaijani human rights and journalistic organizations, also presented data on combat and non-combat losses:<\/p>\n

– according to Peace Dialogue NGO data, a total of 59 soldiers died in Armenia and Karabakh in 2017. Twenty-two servicemen were killed as a result of ceasefire violations, and the remaining 37 – in non-combat conditions.<\/p>\n

– according to the Azerbaijani Khazar Military Research Center, the Azeri armed forces also suffered 59 losses last year; 19 of the soldiers died in combat, and 40 – in non-combat conditions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Peace Dialogue NGO data, a total of 59 soldiers died in Armenia and Karabakh in 2017. Twenty-two servicemen were killed as a result of ceasefire violations, and the remaining 37…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":286718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[65984],"tags":[21459,65400],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283421"}],"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=283421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}