16.04.2005 Shall Russia Stay Barracks?

Russia's Government and Defense Ministry have been recently drafting a bill to be introduced to the State Duma, repealing many social delays of military service and all those for students of higher and professional education. This bill implies that ALL students, young people having children or senior relatives are liable for military duty as well as people who have other grounds for delays.
The military clique is hiding its plans from the nation, for defense of which they are allegedly made. Yet some information trickled down into the press or came from the sources that wouldn't reveal themselves. According to this information, if the amendments to articles 23 and 24 of the law УOf the conscription and military serviceФ are passed, the right to delay will not apply to:
Х undergraduate and postgraduate students;
Х professional students;
Х citizens in charge of I and II grade invalids;
Х citizens parenting a child under three years old or married to a wife with pregnancy term under 26 weeks;
Х firefighters, police, prosecution officers, officers of the Ministry of Emergence;
Х village teachers;
Х village physicians;
Х a number of other categories.
The most striking is the plan to send to the army candidates and doctors of science.
УSuch primitive and senseless decisions are perfectly in the line of the top military. They dream of the whole country marching in ranks, standing at attention to salute their superior and carrying out their orders without questioning. The most effective way to govern people is to turn them into marionettes. It is the best vertical of authority ever imagined. The ban of delays and universal service will cause and are causing terrible loss in intellectual resources to our state. They make it a caserne and teach to live not according to the law of right, but to the law of the gang. This is an apparent threat to Russia's viability!Ф Ц says Maxim Efimov, head of KRD IYSCO УYouth Human Rights GroupФ.
Karelian Regional Department of УYouth Human Rights GroupФ has carried out an action in Petrozavodsk to collect signatures under an appeal to the President of RF, rejecting the draft. The signatures were being collected in PetrSU and KSPU. In roughly two hours we managed to collect 700 signatures. The same action was held in Rostov-upon-Don, Ulyanovsk, Novosibirsk etc. Youth actively protests the bill, particularly, in order to retain their right to acquire education, for almost all enterprises, institutions and organizations need qualified and skilled employees.
The action in Petrozavodsk was highlighted by two TV-channels: УKareliaФ and УTNT-PetronetФ. According to military commissariat the human rights protectors got alarmed too early. But we cannot sit and wait till the military lobby throws the bill into the Duma and, violating all procedure, passes it and in three readings has it adopted in three days! Isn't it enough that Sergei Ivanov and Victor Zavarzin confirmed such bill was being drafted? Or shall we consider defense minister and chair of the Duma defense committee as two irresponsible talkers who decided to scare the nation a bit? It is obviously better to do prevention than fight the law in future.
Today defense is first of all our intellectual and economic potential. The history of 1970-80-s shows that the ban of delay for students will cost the nation more than it shall gain. Not long ago we came across a striking example. Waiting for transport at the station, we heard a young voice behind. УThe speaker was terribly drunk and was telling his friend that after three months in the army he was sent to Chechnya, where he got contused. Now he does not know what he shall do in peaceful life, for he cannot study and there's no job for himФ, says a YHRG activist Alena Andronova. Thanks God, he came back alive, but what will come of him? Is this life? Too often after returning from the army guys wouldn't study even if they had attended lectures willingly before.
The ban of delays means not only tens of thousand broken lives of young people. It also means old people and children being devoid of their support. The military and high bureaucrats who call themselves patriots put at stake Russia's intellectual and economic potential and therefore its very survival.
All people who came to sign the appeal expressed their extreme anxiety about the issue. Many people wanted to sign for their relatives or friends. Both young men and girls were active, as well as their teachers. This signifies a certain civil position. The society shall not put up with the disgraceful and criminal situation in the army. Besides, ban of delays is also a step towards human rights violation. Only together, showing interest in the issues of the country, we will make the status quo better.
There were those, also, who expressed their protest against the action. They were mostly those, who had already served in the army. They say: УThey can't do nothing to me nowЕФ The soldiers are humiliated, tortured, they are rented by the private firms, compelled to beg money, they starve and get no medical aid, escape from the ramparts in battalions all over Russia, die of exhaustion and illnesses, acquired through their УserviceФ. The state cannot provide basic conveniences to their military. The speechless mass, used to live on orders and in privation will do nothing to change the situation when they are back to civil life.
Russia's minister of defense S. Ivanov admitted, that when RF military arrive at the 1 year service, not 2 years, as it is now, Уthe number of conscripts must naturally doubleФ. Therefore, the minister noted, the Defense is scrutinizing this question and also the situation with the functioning delays. УThe mass of the delays we have now, is really too muchФ, he said, Уso we are now working on the amendments to the functioning laws to systematize and reduce the delaysФ. According to the minister, the amendments will not soon be moved to the parliament, Уsupposedly in late 2005-2006Ф.
But of the 25 states of the European Union 10 have abandoned compulsory military service (France, Great Britain and Spain among them), 5 states more will do it before 2008. USA did it in 1957. Russia is to follow them!
Alexandra Koshkarova, YHRG activist.