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Third International Congress of Soldiers’ Mothers
FOR LIFE AND FREEDOM
RESOLUTION REGARDING THE VIOLATION OF THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENS IN THE PROCESS OF CONSCRIPTION TO MILITARY SERVICE
Participants in the Third International Congress of Soldiers’ Mothers, «For Life and Freedom», representing 107 regional organizations of soldiers’ mothers and 14 Russian and international human rights and peacemaking organizations:
Express our deep concern over continuing mass violations of the rights of citizens in the process of conscription to military service:
An order of the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Internal Affairs of the year 2000 established the «rounding-up» or «raid» method of conscription: the «catching» of the ill, students, firemen, accidental citizens and individuals who live in another city, and even citizens of other countries. Conscription commissions are allegedly organized late in the evenings and on weekends, and the following morning they send out troops, the majority of which are sent far from their homes. Parents are not informed immediately and many of them search for missing sons in morgues and hospitals. The result is that students, firemen, and residents of other cities are sued, the sick are in hospitals, parents and wives in demanding constant care in difficult are deprived of the care of their only sons and husbands, and children are neglected.
Doctors in conscription commissions do not examine medical documents, do not listen to conscripts’ complaints, do not send them to medical examinations in hospitals or hospitalization, and make decisions based on the following principle: if an individual has hands and feet, then he is fit for military service and will undergo any medical treatment in the army.
By an order of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Health which entered into force in the year 2001, doctors should examine up to one hundred people in one working day. This means that the duration of an examination by all specialists is 4.5 minutes without a break between sessions. As a result of this practice, young men with the following types of illnesses are found in the army: illnesses of the cardiovascular system and the gastro-intestinal tract, consequences of cranial and cerebral trauma, psychiatric disorders, alcoholism and drug addiction, hepatitis B and C, and the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV (for example, in 2001 there were 18 HIV-positive men in one district of the internal forces). Young men suffering from significant neuro-psychological instability and at high risk of suicide are sent to operational military units.
Educational institutions, fulfilling documents (of executive organs of regions of the Russian Federation) which do not have judicial force, continue to shorten the terms of study (which are prescribed by their regulations) in education institutions, depriving graduates of final-year students of the opportunity to raise their level of education and master their specialties. In military service only very few train in military specialties and all the others are left to ancillary work which does not require skills. After discharge from military service, almost all end up without a specialty and without work. No authorities work on their job placement, and 500 rubles is given for «providing for housekeeping», and only to those who managed to do some work before they entered the army.
Only by converting to voluntary, professional armed forces can we fundamentally change this situation and preserve the younger generation for the future of Russia!
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