The 20-year-old conscript, Hrach Piliposian, was killed at the weekend at a border section in eastern Gegharkunik province in still unclear circumstances. His death was officially confirmed on Saturday hours after the Azerbaijani military reported overnight fighting with Armenian forces deployed in the area.
Local government officials in Gegharkunik said that Piliposian died as a result of that skirmish. The Defense Ministry in Yerevan did not confirm or deny that, promising on Saturday to reveal the circumstances of his death soon.
The ministry has still not given any details of the incidents. Its press service did not answer phone calls on Wednesday.
The soldier’s family living in a village in central Armenia has also not received official information about the causes and circumstances of his death. His uncle, Ashot Khachatrian, said that no military official has visited family members so far.
He cited officers of Piliposian’s army unit as saying privately that the soldier was killed by enemy fire. “According to our information, he got shrapnel and bullet wounds,” Khachatrian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Zhanna Aleksanian, a human rights activist monitoring the armed forces, deplored their “suspicious” silence.
“The defense minister [Suren Papikian] does not bother to provide any information to the public,” said Aleksanian. “The whole [ruling] elite is silent along with him.”
The Defense Ministry has usually been quick to report combat deaths in the Armenian army ranks. Each such case is formally investigated by a corresponding division of the country’s Investigative Committee.
A spokesman for the committee, Vartan Tadevosian, said that it cannot comment on Piliposian’s death because the Defense Ministry has made no statements to that effect. “I don’t know what the situation is now,” he said.