Fifteen-year-old Vadim Mesherekov knows nearly all the Russian homeless in the capital by name. He puts their number at more than fifty and became acquainted with them through his mother, Ira. “They were her friends,” he says. “Once they had homes, but now they don’t.”
For Ira Kritina and Svetlana Golubkina, the New Year came a few days later on January 3 when their friend Vika visited with food and drinks.
As you may remember, in articles that appeared in the January12, January 26, and February 2, 2005 issues of Hetq, we tried to convey the unfortunate state of the homeless in Armenia.
"Just some kind of shelter, that's all I need; I can go on living like I do now," Alla said. " If they just give me a hut or something, I can sit inside it and know I have a roof over my head, I won't be outside in the rain and the cold."
The government announced on Thursday plans to open and finance Armenia 's first-ever shelter for a growing number of homeless people that were virtually non-existent in the past.
Last month, the Armenian Government approved the draft Law on Social Assistance. According to our information, the government had refused to send the draft to the parliament for two years, citing financial problems.
Edik Baghdasaryan, chairman of the Investigative Journalists, NGO, author of the series of articles Street People and co-author of the documentary Nameless Tombs , made a statement at the event, which we are printing here, for those of you who were unable to attend.
Yerevan, January 19, 2005. We were informed by the by the Undertakers' Office of the Yerevan Municipality that this month, as of January 19 th , fourteen corpses had been buried in the area of the Nubarashen Cemetery reserved for "the unclaimed".
Bash, whose real name is Samvel, died on 14 January 2005 . A week earlier while preparing the first draft of an article about him on the occasion of his birthday, I had written that this was definitely his last. My colleagues, however, suggested that to say such things about the living was inappropriate and so, I took the line out.