Recruit deaths should help change military service laws, Chileans say

Published: 2005-06-07

SANTIAGO, Chile (CNS) -- Catholic officials said Chile's policy of mandatory military service should be changed in the wake of the deaths of 45 soldiers during a blizzard in the Andes Mountains in southern Chile. Those who froze to death on the Antuco volcano in mid-May were mostly new recruits who lacked the experience and equipment to survive the harsh conditions, observers said. The group was forced to march in the blizzard at the orders of an army major, despite the objections of mid-level officers. "Public opinion on obligatory recruitment has changed after Antuco. Now is the time for a more profound discussion of the issue, which, hopefully, will lead to the elimination of the obligatory draft altogether. A modern army cannot be based on recruits that must be trained year after year, and in poor conditions," said theologian Alvaro Ramis Olivos, a Catholic and president of the Chilean Network of Conscientious Objectors, an alliance of religious and human rights groups advocating the elimination of mandatory service and the establishment of conscientious objection.

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