The Yezidi soldier Yuri Broyan, a resident of Ejmiatsin’s Jrarat village, who, for psychiatric examination, was sent to a psychiatric hospital by the Defense Ministry, was unable to speak. For nearly 5 months, all he managed to do was shivering and some nervous movements. Two days ago he spoke briefly at Erebuni Hospital as a result of short treatment and told the lawyer what had happened to him.
“Broyan got muscle relaxing injection so that his head stopped moving and he might be able to carry out a tomographic examination,” said her lawyer Hayarpi Sargsyan, on whose motion Broyan was taken to the hospital: “Five months ago Yurik Broyan did not talk. To this day he was communicating with me with head movements. The first words he said was “I am well”; you cannot imagine how happy it made me. He said that he had been injected something at the Kanaz hospital, which resulted in muscular stretching and he thinks that was the reason he has been unable to speak. “
Broyan also spoke of other things to the defense lawyer who did not disclose the content of their conversation not to hinder the investigation of the criminal case. However, when the effect of the relaxing medicine weakened, Broyan lost his ability to speak again, and even today he could not speak to his mother who visited him at the hospital. Doctors say he needs treatment, whereas in the psychiatric clinic where he is kept with mentally ill in a general ward, he does not receive treatment.
“After the effect of the medication passed, he began to shake again, to move his head, and the neurologist said he needed medicines to calm him down. That is, treatment is needed, which is not implemented,” said the lawyer, adding: “It means that we were right, Broyan was in need of medical care, not to take him and throw to the military police, then — to a psychiatric hospital.”
“They called me and made me so happy when they said my child was talking. I went there happy and then returned saddened: he was in his previous state; the effect of the medicine was gone. He was crying because could not talk, shaking again, showing me his right arm and leg, making me understand that they hurt. His forehead and her hands were reddened. I fed him and came home,” said the sorrowful mother.
According to the lawyer, the soldier’s shakings started after the beating in the military police station. Now, he is walking with difficulty, and his whole body shakes. The Yezidi young man was drafted into the army last August.
The ministry of Defense thinks that he is a swindler, and he does all the trick because he does not want to serve in the RA Armed Forces. “It is important to emphasize that such persons have no place in the RA Armed Forces as they defame the dignity of servicemen,” the official statement of the Ministry of Defense about the Yezidi military serviceman said. According to Broyan’s mother, her son has a mental illness, does not speak, it is difficult for him to communicate, and has not even attended school because of his mental illness.
“It is fact that they did not provide the soldier with medical care; they wanted to torture the soldier by keeping him in the psychiatric hospital in dirty and inhuman condition. Today we were able to prove that it was not a swindling, that it is necessary to carry out medical treatment,” said the defender, adding that she was going to apply again to the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Health to make Broyan’s treatment possible.
Let us remind that the serviceman has been drafted into the army with a diagnosis of mild mental illness. The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor office disputes the legality of conscription in the court.
According to the lawyer, three criminal cases are being examined in the military prosecutor’s office concerning Broyan. They are: a) for the violence used against the soldier by a commanding officer, b) for the fact that in the psychiatric hospital an employee entered into an argument with Broyan’s mother and hit her, and c) for the case of self-injury. In the last case, the Broyan has the status of the accused.
Marine Kharatyan