Global Voices: Some young soldiers TJ army hazed to death

The report states that young Tajik conscripts are subject to severe hazing violence in the country’s armed forces, highlighting the April 2014 death of recruit Akmal Davlatov, who according to an investigation concluding in early June 2014 choked on food and died en route to hospital after being beaten in the stomach by Lance Sergeant Farrukh Davlatov during a communal dinner. The report describes systematic post-Soviet-style violence known as dedovshina, in which older conscripts subject new recruits to humiliation and beatings, and documents video footage circulating online of draftees being beaten against a wall. The report states that dedovshina, unheated barracks, lack of food and routine violence fuel a widespread reluctance to serve, prompting many young men to emigrate to Russia for work or to pay bribes to avoid the draft. In response, recruitment officers practise oblava, the street abduction of young men into military service. Citing a Tajik human rights defender interviewed by the BBC, the report says about 40% of conscripts reach the army through such kidnappings, and notes that 31 Tajik students studying in Batken, Kyrgyzstan were abducted into the army mid-semester despite legal exemptions. The report cites another 2014 case in which private Shahbol Mirzoyev suffered a broken neck after a beating by paramedics at a medical station, and notes an overall rise in manslaughter and suicide incidents within the Tajik army.