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.

When a person dies, other people pray for him or her. Relatives, friends, a priest pray. No one prayed for these people.

And since no one prayed for them, no one lit a candle for them, let us honor the memory of the homeless people who froze to death during the months of December and January with a minute of silence. I am sure that none of us will ever find ourselves in that situation, but we will always remember that one day we honored the memory of the homeless people who died, and we won't walk by them with such indifference ever again.

These people were found frozen to death in the streets, they were taken to the morgue from where they driven by the Yerevan Municipal Undertaker's Office to Sovetashen Cemetery and buried in an area of the reserved for "the unclaimed" with just a number on their grave.

Seventeen nameless graves appeared in this part of the cemetery in December, fourteen in January. Reporters at Hetq asked me, "What do we need this event for? As journalists, we've done our work." But just writing articles wasn't enough to accomplish our mission, because for a month, people were dying right before our eyes, and nobody was doing anything to stop it.

We knew some of the personally. Every time we went to visit, we were afraid we'd find them dead. Indeed we couldn't save two of the homeless people - it was too late. Some of them we were able to help. We rented apartments for some of them, we sent two homeless people to their relatives. About others, we don't have information.

We got close to them in a way, as sometimes we spent hours talking to them, listening to their stories - sometimes untrue, sometimes made-up, but in the end they would tell us their real stories, which were very cruel.

Troubling though it may be, most of the responses to our articles have been from abroad. Three doctors from the United States are planning to come to Yerevan in March, to rent an apartment and check on the homeless people and give them medical assistance. The Association of Armenian Students of New York sent $200 for the homeless. David from Yerevan bought clothes for Bash. But not all the responses were positive. A professor of religion from one university told us, "These people are scoundrels; you shouldn't help them."

The chief epidemiologist of Armenia announced a few days ago that there was no threat of epidemic in Armenia . I want to ask him: in two months of winter, more than thirty people have frozen to death-isn't that an epidemic, isn't that a reason to declare a state of emergency? And those are only the deaths that we know about. How many deaths are there that have not been registered? You can't trust the official data of the State Agency of Statistics, or the multitude of studies and reports on poverty reduction, since hundreds and thousands of people are missing from their lists, hundreds of children are not registered anywhere. I thought that representatives from the government would be present in this hall, but they haven't come. I wanted to tell them, "Go and do what you are required to do. No one is asking you to do anything extra, we ask only one thing - do your job."

An Armenian doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath refuses to treat a patient because the patient is a street person, because a street person has no money to pay the doctor, because no one stands up for him, because he in rags, because he is dirty, because he smells bad.

We have dozens of human rights and charity organizations-where are they now? What are they doing?

As journalists, we've done our work. It's your turn now. Don't let people die in the streets.

Where is the Armenian Apostolic Church? What is it doing? Selling candles is not its principal mission. For centuries we have been proud that our Church has been the protector of the poor, the ill, the needy. But not today. Philanthropist Louise Manoogian Simone has donated a hospital to the Church. Do you know who this hospital is intended for? The clergy. They can receive treatment there free of charge, but the outsiders have to pay. Is that the mission of the Church? Louise Manoogian Simone has forgotten to stipulate that the hospital treat the needy, the extremely poor. Otherwise such charity is meaningless.

We promised one homeless man, Bash, to organize a rally for the homeless in front of the government building on January 17. Bash was to gather all the homeless people in Yerevan . They had just one demand: to be given a shelter to spend the night. And I added a second demand: a hot meal once a day. But the rally never took place. Bash died.

And today I want to present these demands to the government of Armenia on behalf of the homeless people. And I ask the international organizations to assist the government for at least two years in carrying out this task.