For the past four days students from different universities in Yerevan have been staging demonstrations protesting a new law passed by parliament that would eliminate deferment from Armenia’s mandatory military service for students attending university.
Currently, students are staging a walkout in the front of the all corpuses of the Yerevan State University, APA reported.
On Thursday, several organizers of the student protests met with Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, who was accompanied by Armenian defense and education ministers, Vigen Sargsyan and Levon Mkrtrchyan, who had already met with student leaders a day before.
The bill, initiated by the defense ministry and adopted in the first reading by the parliament, establishes a compulsory army service for all eligible citizens reaching age 18, while draft deferments are granted to only those students who would agree to undergo parallel military training and serve in the army as officers for three years after graduation.
