INFORMATION AGENCY EXPRESS CHRONICLE

NEWS BULLETIN N 1978

(daytime issue)

March 15, 1996, Friday

MOSCOW <04>

NEWS CONFERENCE "VADIM HESSE, PREVIOUSLY ARRESTED FOR CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION, IS RELEASED" HAS TAKEN PLACE ON MARCH 15 IN RUSSIAN AMERICAN PRESS & INFORMATION CENTER. V. Hesse stated that he intended to be arrested, trying "to draw maximal attention to the problem of dramatic contradiction between our Criminal Code and Constitution, which guarantees to every citizen right to refuse military service on reasons of conscience." He also stressed that his problem as well as same problems of hundreds of thousands of young Russians would be finally solved only by passing a democratic law on alternative civilian service.

In the news conference also have taken part Nikolaj Khramov, secretary of Antimilitarist Radical Association, and Sergej Sorokin, president of Movement Against Violence.

(Vadim Hesse's statement see in the appendix).

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