Gegham Vardanyan

Criminal case # 13213403

On September 13, 2003, 16-year-old Gagik Hakobyan was killed on a Yerevan street. He and two friends had gotten involved in a fight with two prostitutes. Gagik and his friends had gone to a birthday party that night, and as they were walking home they saw some prostitutes standing outside the cycling rink on Grigor Lusavorich Street and decided to proposition them. The sex workers didn't want to get involved with minors, the boys' pride was offended, a scuffle ensued, and Gagik was killed.

Azniv Baghdasaryan
According to the indictment, Azniv Baghdasaryan, who had been engaged in prostitution for nine years, "thrust a cutting tool into Gagik Hakobyan's neck area with the intention to kill or cause life threatening injuries." In court, Baghdasaryan did not plead guilty. She told the court that she had just wanted to scare the young men who had insulted her away. "When they hit me in the stomach it hurt. And when they hit me in the eye, it made me furious. It made me especially furious when they cursed my mother's grave."

The court didn't believe Azniv, and sentenced her to ten years in prison. The victim's father, Sahak Hakobyan, blames society most of all for his son's death, because it tolerates sexual traffic on the streets.

Scuffles with clients are a common occurrence for prostitutes in Yerevan. It was no accident that Azniv Baghdasaryan had a knife with her when the incident happened. As a rule, prostitutes keep at least a razor with them, and try to avoid drunks and minors. Azniv's friend Zara (not her real name), a prostitute herself, admits that the same thing could easily happen to her. Women looking for clients in the streets of Yerevan are used to attacks by drunken men. Sometimes clients don't pay afterwards, or they beat the women up to get their money back. Zara dreams of buying a gun for self-defense.

Silva
Silva, who has been in the sex trade for a long time, lifts her shirt to show the evidence of a meeting with a client that took place years ago - a 20-centimeter-long scar along her belly. "I went with a client. He took me to the Nork district, and five people were waiting there. They ripped up my belly because I didn't do everything they wanted, I didn't do unconventional things. They said, "If you're not going to do it, then you can die,"

Silva grew up in an orphanage; her parents had died in a car accident. She suffers from rheumatism and the "Yerevan disease", and is a second group invalid. After the orphanage, she had to live on the streets for a while. "When officers from the police department of the Kentron district saw me sleeping on the street, they would feel sorry for me and give me some clothes; they would let me into their cars to warm up, I am grateful to them. I was a good girl before I became a streetwalker," Silva recalls. She first engaged in prostitution on the advice of a friend from the orphanage. One day, she went with her friend to the gathering place for Yerevan prostitutes-the wall next to the cycling rink, or as she says, "by the circus" - stood there, and became a prostitute.

Policemen force prostitutes to be informers

There are 2,000 prostitutes registered by the police department in the fight against the illegal circulation of narcotic drugs. This is the official number. To calculate the real figure, this number is multiplied by various coefficients - five, ten or even twenty. The most widespread type of prostitution in Yerevan is streetwalking. The cost for sex with a streetwalker varies from five to fifty US dollars. "They come up and ask, 'How much do you cost?' I say: 'Twenty dollars, no oral sex.' They don't understand what oral means, I say: 'I don't perform minet [the Russian term].' They say: 'What about for twenty dollars?' Then they ask: 'Will you do it if I pay forty?' 'No, I say, not even for a billion'", says Zara, describing her daily routine.

Prostitution is not considered a crime in Armenia. According to Article 179 of the Administrative Code, a prostitute is fined from 500 to 1,000 drams the first time she is caught. A woman who is caught twice in one year is fined 1,000 to 2,000 drams.

Tigran Petrosyan

The Police Department's fourth department, responsible for fighting drugs and the illegal circulation of weapons, periodically rounds up prostitutes on the streets, brings them in to the police stations, and fines them. Police officer Tigran Petrosyan says that there is no need to use force to bring the prostitutes in. "They all know us. They understand that this is our job as officers of this department."

Prostitutes are afraid of the police. Women say that sometimes they try to get services for free. It's a kind of bribe in exchange for a place to work. Those who cooperate with the police have their own place on the streets. Zara tells me about her professional problems, as she lights another cigarette: "Policemen ask us to be their informers, to tell them about illegal weapons, murderers, drug dealers, soldiers in civilian clothes. They say, 'Tell us about them and we won't do anything to you.' I go out to work to support my family, not to see whether a weapon is legal or not."

Officer Petrosyan considers the stories told by prostitutes "just rumors, gossip, in order to please you, or defame the police." Zara, who consorts with law enforcement officers every day, admits that she never makes formal complaints against policemen when they beat her. She is afraid that they would go unpunished, and it would only make things worse for her.

To be continued