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YABLOKO protests against sending schoolchildren to the barracks

Statement of the YABLOKO party

February 26, 2010

 

The YABLOKO party expresses its resolute protest against the plans of the Moscow government to restore the [Soviet] system of preservice military training with regular encampments of schoolchildren and introduction of the fundamentals of the military service as a subject in the school curriculum.

We think that the Concept of Preservice Training of the Young People in Moscow Until 2020 endangers life and health of the young Muscovites and is targeted at conservation of the present problems rather than reconstruction of the army, which inevitably leads to further degradation of the armed forces.

The present system of conscription to the Armed Forces of Russia serves only for justification of the existence of the Russian military bureaucracy and their deriving profits from gratuitous soldiers’ labour. Mass-scale violations of the rights of the young people of the conscription age and harassment – derision, beatings and blackmail – have become a daily reality in the army.

The concept adopted by the Moscow Government also contradicts to the essential principles of the military reform announced in early 2000s: fight against harassment of subordinates in the army and gradual transfer to a professional army.

YABLOKO demands from the Moscow and the federal government to abolish the plans of mandatory preservice military training at schools, cancellation of conscription and creation of a professional army formed on a contract basis.


Sergei Mitrokhin,
Chair of the YABLOKO party

Ivan Bolshakov,
Chair of the Commission on the Youth Policies of the Moscow YABLOKO

 

See also:

Human Rights

The Russian Army


 

 

 


Statement of the YABLOKO party

February 26, 2010