On June 2, Armenia’s Minister of Economy and Deputy Chairman of the Board of the ruling Civil Contract party, Gevorg Papoyan, responded to a question about the anticipated arrival of “100,000 voters from Russia” for the upcoming parliamentary elections:
| “I’m very happy about that because, first, our polling shows that most of those people will vote for us; and second, we need those people because training camps are currently being conducted – one-month ones, yes, and it would be very good if, say, 30,000–40,000 of those 100,000 people stayed here – we would send them to training camps. They would participate in training camps for a month or two and then return to Kaluga. So what? What’s the problem?” |
On June 3, a similar statement was made by Taron Chakhoyan, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of Armenia:
| “Those arriving from Russia to vote for Kaluga Samo in exchange for electoral bribes will be enrolled in 25-day training camps. Since yesterday, some strange discussions have started about whether these people should be enrolled in 25-day training camps or not. The answer is unequivocally yes – they should be enrolled. For one simple reason: if these people are citizens of the Republic of Armenia and have the right to vote in Armenia, then naturally they also have obligations toward the Republic of Armenia and should participate in 25-day training camps. And all those who evade the 25-day training camps will naturally be subject to criminal liability. Have a nice day.” |
Today, June 4, a video distributed by Radio Aurora showed military police officers checking citizens’ passports at border checkpoints:
| “The Military Police of the Republic of Armenia are serving notices at border crossing points to male Armenian passport holders arriving from Russia who are under the age of 55. Citizens arriving from the Russian Federation are being issued documents by the Military Police requiring their participation in 25-day training camps.” |
The Armenian Center for Political Rights cannot verify whether the allegations concerning electoral bribery involving individuals arriving from abroad (including from Russia) are true. The investigation of such crimes falls within the competence of law-enforcement and judicial authorities and must follow procedures established by criminal law. That issue is secondary. Training camps constitute a form of compulsory military service, and reservists participating in them may be assigned to combat duty. By using training camps as a means of combating alleged electoral bribery, the political authorities are imposing a punishment on citizens that is not prescribed by law.
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Military or alternative service, in itself, is not considered forced labor and may be lawful when it applies equally to all persons under the same conditions. In the case of training camps, however, citizens are not automatically enrolled but may be enrolled. Whether a particular reservist is called up depends on the discretion of the relevant authority – in this case, the Ministry of Defense of Armenia and its subordinate bodies. Armenian law does not require a rotational system or lottery-based selection of reservists for training camps. Because of this legislative deficiency, one reservist may be called up repeatedly, while another may never be called up at all.
This is not the first time Armenian authorities have used training camps as a form of punishment. In May 2022, during opposition protests, Andranik Kocharyan, a member of parliament from the ruling Civil Contract faction and Chairman of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Defense and Security, called on the police and the National Security Service to provide the Ministry of Defense with the personal data of individuals detained during the demonstrations, “assuming” that the protesters were “the contingent that had evaded three-month training camps and compulsory military service.” Another ruling-party MP, Vahagn Aleksanyan, later confirmed that this directive had been implemented, stating that “some of the participants in that mighty ‘Resistance’ movement were sent to the front line, some were not, but a significant number were.”
Training camps have also been applied arbitrarily to individuals forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh who applied for Armenian citizenship. As early as 2024, the Armenian Center for Political Rights addressed these issues in detail in its report Training Camps: Discrimination ‘Prescribed by Law’. The ACPR recommended:
- To amend the RA law “On Military Service and the Status of Servicemen” providing for a rotation mechanism for involvement in training camps and a methodology for selecting participants for a specific training camps based on chance.
- Pending the abovementioned amendment to the law, exclude the discrimi- natory, arbitrary, and unlawful approach to involving reservists in training camps and through them in combat duty according to intranational or other characteristics.
- To initiate criminal proceedings and conduct an objective investigation on the grounds of the crime provided by Article 203 of the Criminal Code of the RA (Discrimination). To press charges against those officials who initiated actions aimed at involving citizens in training camps and through them in combat duty, according to political views or other characteristics, as well as gave instructions to carry out such actions.
Given that the law has not been amended, no one has yet been held accountable for such discrimination, and state officials continue to employ the same practices on the eve of elections, the recommendations of the Armenian Center for Political Rights remain not only relevant but increasingly urgent.
Assignment to combat duty is equivalent to military service and carries all the associated restrictions and risks. The existing practice of enrolling citizens in combat duty in order to punish political opponents or restrict the voting rights of supporters of political competitors, combined with the law’s deficient regulatory framework, is incompatible with the standards of a state governed by the rule of law.
Armenian Center for Political Rights