“Political responsibility is always there, it should be,” declared Artur Sakunts, head of Helsinki Civil Assembly’s Vanadzor office, human rights activist, during the discussion on “Who is responsible for the tragedy that happened in the army” in the “Article 3” club. He was referring to the responsibility for the fire at the shelter of the engineer-sapper troop of the N military unit of the RA Ministry of Defense located in the territory of Azat village. He stated that they have consistently raised these issues, and some tools require daily work that must be done correctly.
The human rights activist emphasized. “The essence of responsibility is not only the prevention of such cases but also the implementation of institutional changes for this purpose. The blow that our armed forces received during the war of 2020 required different approaches and a good approach in terms of policy change, in terms of military service conditions; that is, it is not the case that we raise the question of responsibility only during a specific incident. The actions that were supposed to derive from the principle of ensuring the safety of citizens were not ensured. And what are the guarantees that such situations will not happen again?”
To the observation, nine people were fired without the investigation being completed. At the same time, when the question comes to political responsibility, they say that an investigation should be conducted, and to the question, how you would assess this situation, Artur Sakunts said: “I regard it as an irresponsible approach. That is how scapegoats are appointed to remove the institution of political responsibility from the agenda. Regardless of the specific case of who took the gasoline container, the problem is that the soldiers have been in that shelter for 1.5-2 years.
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The Minister of Defense and the Head of the General Staff are responsible. Finally, in addition to HRD monitoring, there is departmental oversight. I would understand the removal of the commander of that corps if it was shown and substantiated that, for example, the head of the General Staff said one thing, and he did not do it. We do not see any information about the actions taken by the head of the General Staff, the Minister of Defense. And what should be the case with this new approach? Let them order that the shelter bars be removed; no company commander can make arbitrary decisions regarding deployment. Political responsibility is always there, and it should be.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
