Armenia: Conscientious objector begins two-year jail term

On 20 August, Yerevan police took 21-year-old Baptist conscientious objector Davit Nazaretyan to the city's Nubarashen Prison to begin his two-year jail term for refusing military service on grounds of conscience. Nina Karapetyants of the Helsinki Association for Human Rights described Nubarashen as "the worst prison" in Armenia. "There are no proper conditions for exercise or for taking a shower." The office of Human Rights Defender Anahit Manasyan did not respond to questions on what it might do to defend Nazaretyan's rights.

Police arrived this morning, 20 August, at the home in Yerevan of 21-year-old Baptist conscientious objector Davit Nazaretyan. They arrested him and took him initially to Nubarashen Prison in southern Yerevan. He has now begun his two-year jail term, a month after the Cassation Court rejected his final appeal. The Alternative Service Commission had rejected his application in January 2023.

"Unfortunately we knew this would happen," Vardan Astsatryan of the government's Department for Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs told Forum 18. "The law gives two possibilities – go to the army or, unfortunately, jail." The law also gives the possibility of alternative civilian service, which Nazaretyan applied for and which the Alternative Service Commission, on which Astsatryan sits, rejected.

Nina Karapetyants of the Helsinki Association for Human Rights describes Nubarashen as "the worst prison" in Armenia. "There are no proper conditions for exercise or for taking a shower," she told Forum 18. The Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment describes conditions there as "generally very poor" and in some parts "unacceptable".

[UPDATE 9 September 2024: Prison authorities in early September transferred Nazaretyan to Sevan open prison, where conditions are better than in Nubarashen prison.]

Maksim Telegin is a Molokan and the last known convicted conscientious objector, jailed in 2021. He said the first seven days – when he was held in quarantine on his own – were "very difficult". He was then taken to a cell with several other prisoners before being transferred to a labour camp near Sevan. It remains unclear whether Nazaretyan will remain in Nubarashen or be transferred to another prison.

Jailing conscientious objectors to military service and not respecting their right to a genuinely civilian alternative service violate Armenia's legally-binding international human rights obligations.

The Eurasia Partnership Foundation is aware that lawyers for another Armenian non-governmental organisation are preparing a case on Nazaretyan's behalf to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. "It will not make much change to Davit's case because the Strasbourg court's decisions are released quite late, but it might be a precedent," the Eurasia Partnership Foundation told Forum 18.

The Court has issued many rulings in favour of individuals – including from Armenia – who were denied the right not to serve in the armed forces on grounds of conscience.

Nazaretyan is the only conscientious objector known to be currently jailed or facing jail under Criminal Code Article 461, Part 1 ("Avoidance of mandatory military or alternative service or conscription"). At least two Molokans have faced criminal prosecution in recent years for refusing to serve in the armed forces on grounds of conscience.

On 20 August, Forum 18 asked the office of Human Rights Defender Anahit Manasyan:
- what she and her office have done to defend Nazaretyan's right not to serve in the armed forces on grounds of conscience in accordance with the law;
- what she and her office have done to protect him from punishment for trying to exercise this right;
- and what she and her office will do or are doing now to protect his human rights.

Forum 18 also asked Manasyan's office what are the "daily activities" to protect the right not to serve in the armed forces on grounds of conscience it wrote to Forum 18 about earlier.

Forum 18 had received no response by the end of the working day in Yerevan of 20 August.

For many years, Armenia jailed everyone unable to perform military service on grounds of conscience, despite a commitment to the Council of Europe to introduce a civilian alternative to military service by January 2004. In May 2013, amendments to the 2003 Alternative Service Law and to the 2003 Law on Implementing the Criminal Code were passed, and a fully civilian alternative service was created. The overwhelming majority of successful applicants for civilian alternative service are Jehovah's Witnesses.

Yet the Alternative Service Commission still does not allow all applications for alternative civilian service from conscientious objectors to military service, who still – against Armenia's legally-binding international human rights obligations - face the possibility of being jailed for their beliefs. Officials have refused to explain why non-Jehovah's Witness applicants for civilian alternative service are normally refused.

A typical rejection order signed by the Justice Minister (for example in the case of Molokan conscientious objector Ivan Mikhailov in August 2018) claims that "the applicant failed to justify that his duty to perform mandatory military service is in serious and weighty conflict with his conscience or with his deep and genuine religious faith or other beliefs". Molokans are a traditionally pacifist Christian community which emerged in the 18th century. Yet, "the Commission does not give alternative service to Molokans", a member of the Molokan community told Forum 18.

Human rights defender Isabella Sargsyan of the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, who has been following Nazaretyan's case, noted to Forum 18 in November 2023: "My experience suggests that government officials - except those who deal with human rights professionally – are not well educated in human rights issues, and often lead by their own perceptions and biases when dealing with matters related to minority rights."