Parents of man that died in Transnistrian army suggest organizing committee of soldiers’ mothers

The parents of soldier Yevgeny Kolobyshko, whose body was found in the Nistru early this January, appealed to the Transnistrian mass media to organize a Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, Info-Prim Neo’s correspondent in the region reports. Yevgeny Kolobyshko was the only child in the family. He disappeared from the armed forces in October 2007. The investigator of the case, prosecutor Mikhail Burguvan, said that Yevgeny was drowned while still alive and this fact was confirmed by the genetic examination carried out in Rostov-on-Don city. The parents say that for the first time Yevgeny did not go back to the garrison from his leave in September and asked to be transferred to another subdivision. In October, he disappeared from the unit for the second time. Parents’ committees are now officially organized in the military units in Transnistria, but they are powerless, have few members and do not have control over happenings. At the same time, the soldiers are afraid to defend their rights, said the mother of the dead soldier Yekaterina Kolobyshko. Another widely reported case related to maltreatments in the army was the death of the recruit Anatol Mospan from Lunga village in Dubasari district. He was conscripted on December 28, 2007 and died in one of the military units in Tiraspol on January 2. The parents and co-villagers suppose he died after being subjected to violence. The soldier’s father and mother told then the news agency ”Novy Region-2” that they came to this conclusion immediately after they saw the body of their son, brought from the unit to be buried. “The military commission told us from the start that the body of our son will be brought at 13.00 and we should bury him at 13.30. Is something like this possible? They brought him dressed in military uniform and given with face powder. We decided to dress him in suit,” Anatol’s father Igor Mospan said. As he said, Anatol’s legs were covered in bruises; the shanks bore signs of cuts and kicks as if hit with boots, while the heels were pierced. He was bruised in the zone of the pelvic bones; the neck was swollen, while the fingers were livid as if caught in the door. Commenting on the official cause of his son’s death - cardiac insufficiency - Igor Mospan said that Anatol was examined by five medical commissions and none of them found any heart disease. All of them ruled he was fit for military service. “He just took his driving license after passing another medical examination. He was healthy while a child,” the father said. In this connection, Anatol’s parents and their neighbors that took part in the funeral, activists of the parents’ committee of the army, lodged a petition to Transnistria’s prosecutor and to the military prosecutor, asking to probe the death of Anatol Mospan and the correctness of the steps taken by the persons in charge. After Transnistrian experts and coroners from Odessa presented their conclusions, the official cause of Anatol’s death was established, though the body was not exhumed. On the eve of March 8, the official in charge of human rights in Transnistria, Vasilii Kalko, told Pridnestrovie TV that legal action was taken against the doctors that formed part of the recruitment commission. According to the Transnistrian health ministry’s official statistics, only two of ten recruits are physically fit for military service in Transnistria’s army. As many as 700 young men will be drafted into the army this spring, as against 500 persons last spring.