Debedavan resident Artashes Asatryan was due to return from the army on July 23 and celebrate his 21st birthday on August 8. But he did not return. He is one of the missing in the 44-day war.
It is 9 months now, the Asatryans have not heard from Artashes. The father, Arsen, last spoke to his son on November 6, the 40th day of the war. He does not know where Artashes, his only son, was fighting.
“We have no information. He was a secretive person, he never said where he was. He would just say ‘I’m just fine’, and that was it. It was not customary for him to say where he was, or to tell how he fought, what he was doing. He was an ordinary conscript,” says the father, Arsen Asatryan.
He assures that he did everything possible to find his son. “We also applied to the Red Cross, they promised to find him. But no one knows where he is. He is not among the captives… I do not know,” says the father.
On January 10, Arsen was called from the Republican Forensic Medical Center and told that his son had been found. Arsen went to the center. He was shown the remains of an unknown soldier.
“They called and showed body parts. It was not a complete body, but the parts were well preserved. I said it’s not mine [my son]. Why; don’t I know my son? They were normal parts, but they were not my son’s, 100%. “They wanted to do something, remove one person from the list, close the case and get rid of it,” Artashes’ father explains.
The second DNA sample was taken, this time –from Artashes’s mother. There is no answer yet.
Arsen waits for his son every day. He has no job. The livelihood of the family is the garden cultivated by the husband and the wide. Every month, the family receives 300,000 drams from the Fund for Compensation for Damages Caused to the Life and Health of Soldiers. But 9 months pass, and if Artashes’ body is not found, if he is not recognized as a missing person, the family will hardly continue to receive money from the state.
The RA Government Decision N 2001-L of December 10, 2020 stipulates that until the status of the missing servicemen is clarified, the family members of each missing serviceman are provided with assistance in the amount of 300,000 AMD per month, but not for more than 9 months.
What will happen after 9 months, will they continue to pay 300 thousand drams for the soldiers with the status of missing? At the request of Forrights.am, the General Department of Veterans Health and Social Protection of the Ministry of Defense responded that the term had already been extended.
“Initially, it was set at 6 months, but as the process was getting longer, at the initiative of the Department, the term was extended for another three months, to 9 months. At the moment, we cannot say what the government will decide in the case of the missing who have not been identified and buried.” The Department informed that in case the body of the missing soldier is identified and buried, the monthly payment of 300,000 AMD stops, the beneficiary applies to the court to get the status of a missing person, which is equal to the status of a victim.
Upon receiving the status of a missing person, the serviceman is compensated by the Fund for Compensation for Damages Caused to the Life and Health of Servicemen, but the 300 hundred thousand AMD previously paid is deducted from the beneficiary’s lump sum of 10 million AMD. In other words, all the money given before the funeral is later deducted from the lump sum given by the Foundation.
Are you aware that the 9 months expire in August and you will not receive any money? “No, I’m not interested in that, I need my child. I am waiting for my child,” says Artashes Asatryan’s father.
There are many parents today who refuse to accept the results of identification. There are more than 130 unidentified soldiers at the forensic examination center who are not being taken home. Even after a double examination, people refuse to trust the state and continue to wait for their soldier. Arsen Asatryan has not yet received the results of the second DNA test, but he is sure that his son will come back.
Syuzan Simonyan