HUMAN RIGHTS INFORMATION AGENCY "EXPRESS-CHRONICLE"

ENGLISH WEEKLY NEWS DIGEST

12 May 1997

MOSCOW (ASI) If before autumn this year the Russia State Duma does not pass a law on alternative civilian service (ACS), the Russian army will become ineffective, according to Anatoly Pchelintsev, director of the Institute of Religion and Law, and a member of the State Duma working group for the preparation of a law on ACS. At a press-conference at the Russian-American Information Press Centre on 6 May, he pointed out that last year 30,000 young people evaded military service (of which about 300 people had charged).

According to another speaker at the press-conference, Maria Ivanyan, an official of the State Duma committee for the Affairs of Public Organisations, the adoption of a law on ACS is being obstructed by the resistance of the Russian Defence Ministry. At the same time, work of the draft law is complicated by contradictions within the working group, between representatives of the Committee for Defence and the Committee for the Affairs of Public Organisations. The Defence Committee insists that young men must perform ACS at military bases (at military farms, for example), and outside the boundaries of the territorial federation subject in which they reside. Moreover, the wages of such servants must be minimal, and they can be sent to ACS only after they have proved their convictions to a specially created commission.