The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Right yesterday, in a 16-1 decision, overruled prior precedent as well as a Chamber judgment in the case, and held that
Art. 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects military conscientious objectors. In
Bayatyan v. Armenia, (ECHR, July 7, 2011), the court awarded damages to a Jehovah's Witness who had been imprisoned for refusing to serve in the Armenian military. The Court said:
opposition to military service, where it is motivated by a serious and insurmountable conflict between the obligation to serve in the army and a person’s conscience or his deeply and genuinely held religious or other beliefs, constitutes a conviction or belief of sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance to attract the guarantees of Article 9.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court said:
the Convention is a living instrument which must be interpreted in the light of present-day conditions and of the ideas prevailing in democratic States today....
Subsequent to the conviction at issue in this case, Armenia changed its law to provide for conscientious objection. Yesterday, in light of the ECHR decision, Amnesty International issued a
joint statement with four other groups calling on Turkey and Azerbaijan-- the only two European Convention adherents without conscience laws-- to enact legislation to protect conscientious objectors. It also called on Armenia to make its Alternative Service law more meaningful.
Forum18 has more background on the situation.
