Armenia’s Investigative Committee suggested on Monday that the fatal shootings were the result of a gross violation of military regulations. The law-enforcement agency did not immediately arrest or charge any other servicemen in connection with the deadly incident which it said occurred at an army post on the border with Azerbaijan.
The shootings sparked fresh uproar from human rights activists monitoring the armed forces. According to one of them, Zhanna Andreasian, 54 Armenian soldiers died in the first half of this year, and only a dozen of them were killed by enemy fire.
Fifteen other conscripts were found dead in January at their military barracks destroyed by a major fire. Virtually all other victims of deadly noncombat incidents committed suicide, according to military investigators. Six more soldiers, including the latest victims, died in August.
“This is unprecedented,” Andreasian said on Monday, commending on the grim statistics. “There was no such scale under our former rulers.”
The veteran activist blamed Defense Minister Suren Papikian and the army top brass for the increased number of deaths which she said makes mockery of sweeping defense reforms repeatedly announced by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian after the 2020 war with Azerbaijan.
“He [Papikian] doesn’t speak up, and we don’t know … what they are reforming. He had better resign together with his boss [Pashinian,]” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Another human rights campaigner, Artur Sakunts, said the declared reforms cannot make any difference unless the authorities take “urgent” measures to tackle poor army discipline. He said military commanders must at last be held accountable for deaths and other serious incidents happening in their units.
Andreasian similarly complained that senior or mid-ranking officers are rarely prosecuted over such crimes. She accused investigators of routinely covering them up.