"Lack of alternative" military service issue is raised ever so often in Nagorny Karabakh

According to NGO Centre of Civil Initiatives from Nagorny Karabakh, the following religious organizations act in Karabakh: "Jehovah's Witnesses" (from 1993, 200 members), "Evangelist Baptists" (from 2000, about 20 members), "Christian Evangelist Faith" (from 1999, 350 members), "Seventh-Day Adventists" (from 2000, 40 members), "Evangelist Church" (from 1995, 600 members), "Jesusists" (data not available).

According to the Karabakh newspaper "Demo," three 19-year-old members of the Christian organizations were imprisoned in 2005. In all the three cases, the young people were punished for avoiding military service rather than for their religious faith in general.

Two of them, Areg Avanesian and Armen Grigorian, are Jehovah's Witnesses. They were given 4 and 2 years in prison, respectively. Both of them accept alternative military service. Gaghik Mirzoian was sentenced to one year of prison for refusing to take a military oath and not for avoiding military service. Gaghik is a Baptist and he claims that Jesus prohibits one to take oaths.

According to Albert Voskanian, chair of the NGO "Centre of Civil Initiatives," the opinion on the "lack of alternative" military service and the necessity to elaborate an efficient mechanism of ascertaining appropriate religious beliefs of recruits is voiced stronger and stronger.

All religious minorities have a common characteristic feature in that they act without registration at the Nagorny Karabakh Ministry of Justice as public organizations, claiming that the latter sets too strict requirements. The Stepanakert law enforcement agencies confiscated the Baptists' published literature several times because they placed tables with religious books in the centre of Nagorny Karabakh capital without an appropriate license from the city hall.