12 Halidzor residents await verdict of Constitutional Court

The land squabble pitting Halidzor village residents against the Instate Management and Administration Company (IMAC) continues unabated.

The brouhaha all started in 2009, when the Armenian government declared certain village lands as eminent domain to be handed over to the company.

12 affected residents held out. They weren’t satisfied with the land evaluations or the company’s compensation offers.

They went to court in November, 2009, seeking to have the government’s decision nullified.

The following March, the court found that the plaintiffs’ right to a public examination of the issue had been violated.

In response, IMAC took the protesting village residents to court in a separate suit lodged at the Syunik Regional Court. The company wanted the court to force the hold-outs to sign a sales contract.

IMAC won the suit and the village defendants launched an appeal. In December 2010, the RA Appeals Court threw out the appeal. The Halidzor residents then took the case to the RA Court of Cassation. It too threw out their appeal that April.

That in turn, led Karen Mezhlumyan, the attorney representing the villagers, to take the matter to the RA Constitutional Court.

In February 2011, Armenia’s highest court found that the lower court’s decision violated certain provisions of the Constitution regarding the right to effective legal remedies and the restoration of violated rights.

In November, Mezhlumyan again petitioned the Constitutional Court. The case was accepted and an examination is scheduled for February 14.

The RA National Assembly was been named the defendant. The attorney is arguing that Article 198, Part 3, of the RA Civil Code is unconstitutional.

Mezhlumyan claims that IMAC never sent the draft sales contracts to all village landholders.

Article 31 of the RA Constitution reads, in part:

Everyone shall have the right to freely own, use, dispose of and bequeath the property belonging to him/her. The right to property shall not be exercised to cause damage to the environment or infringe on the rights and lawful interests of other persons, the society and the state.

No one shall be deprived of property except for cases prescribed by law in conformity with the judicial procedure.

The private property may be alienated for the needs of the society and the state only in exclusive cases of prevailing public interests, in the manner prescribed by the law and with prior equivalent compensation.

Attorney Mezhlumyan claims that in the Halidzor case “prior equivalent compensation” was absent and that his clients never agreed to the amounts offered since they believed the appraisals to be incorrect.

Last December, Hetq tried to get some answers from IMAC about its plans to build a hotel on the confiscated lands. In its response, the company skirted around the issue of what steps it would take to appease the village hold-outs.

IMAC Director Tigran Ghazaryan merely replied that the scope of the construction and related costs had yet to be finalized.

So what did IMAC have in mind three years ago during the initial land grab?

Perhaps a smaller amount of land could have been deemed as eminent domain.

When we asked attorney Mezhlumyan the same question he said the rights of the Halidzor residents continue to be violated.

“Is it any wonder that residents are refusing to sign when compensation for one square meter of land amounts to the price of one and a half eggs?”