Eduard Hayrumyan, who participated in the 25-day training gatherings organized by the Ministry of Defense, presented details of the process to Forrights.am. According to his observation, the training gatherings are organized not to increase the level of preparedness of citizens, but to fill the gap in existing human resources.
“During the 25-day gatherings, the officers said, ‘Guys, you came to go up to positions.’ The purpose of taking us to gatherings was to take us to positions. On the first day, they give you a contract to sign that you agree to go up to positions. The training gathering does not imply that you will be taken to positions, so they take you to positions with an additional contract. They give you a contract in the name of the unit commander, you sign that you agree to go up to positions. During these 25 days, we did not do any lessons, except for the firing training. Regarding first aid, they said, ‘Well, guys, you’ll somehow learn’… there was no educational process.”
“The state is filling the personnel gap [in the army] with these training sessions: from what I saw, that’s how it was. I went to the training sessions, but I didn’t gain any additional knowledge; just improved my shooting a little. During the training sessions, you should either improve people’s knowledge, educate them, or say, ‘Guys, you are needed in positions.’ 250 people were supposed to come after us, they had already been told that they had to move up in positions,” Eduard Hayrumyan told Forrights.am.
Let us remind that Forrights.am has referred to the notice Eduard Hayrumyan’s received about summons to participate in the training sessions in the summer months, when he, being a citizen of Artsakh, applied for RA citizenship and a passport. The military commission offered him the documents necessary for a passport only after signing the summons to participate in the training sessions. Eduard Hayrumyan told Forrights.am that during the gatherings, he found out that several other Artsakh residents, like him, were included in the gatherings on similar conditions.
“The same thing was happening to all the Artsakh men. There were four Artsakh guys in our group. They were also given a notice for military training. They said, ‘We will not register you, we will not give you a passport until you participate in the 25-day military training.’ There was a guy named Hayk whose goal was to serve in the Armenian army. He had served in Artsakh, he wanted to serve here too, he was happy that he would rise in rank. He had gone to collect the necessary documents to go into service, and they said the same thing to him at the military commission. He had said, ‘I am going to serve, so why are you sending me to military training? Just give me a piece of paper saying you have registered me, and I will go and serve.’ He was told, ‘No, go to military gathering first, and then you will go to military service,'” said Eduard Hayrumyan, noting that the military commissions were trying to recruit people using various methods to take them to military training.
“I think that the military commissariats have a problem gathering people, this is an opportunity that they use to collect people. There were 90 people in our group. Some went to the military commissariat with a passport issue, some– with other issues; they said sign the notice so that we can resolve your issue. There was a person who participated in the three-month gatherings last year, and this year they sent him to the 25-day gatherings.”
Citizens with health problems were also included in the training gatherings. Eduard Hayrumyan presented a case that happened in front of him.
“There was also a person who had not participated in the gatherings for 30 years, he was coming for the first time. There was a 51-year-old citizen who had a blood pressure problem and other concomitant diseases. On the second day, his blood pressure rose to 21., I was there. The officer asked me to take him to the medical station. The nurse said, ‘I have been working here for so many years, but I have never seen anyone with a blood pressure of 210’. This man said throughout the commission that he had high blood pressure, but they were sending him to an altitude of 2,320 meters, to Ishkhanasar. The doctor said, if you take this man up, you can’t bring him down. There were three people who had obvious health problems, they were elderly people, they had high blood pressure problems. The commanding staff was also not happy with the people sent by the military commission: they wanted healthy people to take them to positions.”
The participant in the training exercises also spoke out about the gaps in social justice. He noted that not all leyers of society are included in the training exercises.
“People were raising a fair question: how is it that I have been coming several times already, and there are people of my age in our building who never come? The main injustice that I saw was that. There was no wealthy person in our group; this question arose for everyone,” he said.
Narek Kirakosyan