See also: "Residents of the Red Zone"

Many of Yerevan 's historical buildings have been included in the "Construction program for land area appropriated in the interests of the state," according to Government Decision 1151-N of January 8, 2002 . Today, Yerevan 's relics are being mercilessly destroyed under the pretext of "land use" - cultural monuments are being torn down alongside buildings scheduled for demolition. Recently, non-government organizations along with dozens of architects and artists once again appealed to the Armenia 's prime minister.

Their open letter entitled "Let us preserve the culture of Old Yerevan" and aimed at preserving contained concrete suggestions. In particular, the signatories asked that buildings 9, 17, 25, 26, 30, and 39 Pavstos Buzand Street, 2 Pushkin Street, 22, 41, 43, and 45 Koghbatsi Street, 11-13 Teryan Street, and as 23 and 74 Aram Street be included in the list of monuments under state protection, and, aiming at reestablishing the complete historical atmosphere there, that their mass destruction, supposedly justified in the name of their transfer, be prevented. The letter contained sound arguments from the architectural and engineering point of view, as well as the cultural.

Gabriel Abramov's acquisition

25 Buzand Street was built at the end of the nineteenth century. This building, now dilapidated, is home to Arthur Sildiryan, and his wife and child. Sildaryan has refused to sign the contract proposed by the Office for the Implementation of the Construction Project on the Administrative Border of the Kentron District of Yerevan (OIP), and is instead suing the agency. He is in possession of a number of archival documents, including a statement from the "City Residential Report" dated 1932, saying that the house and yard occupying 1400 square meters formerly known as 29 Ruben Street belonged to Arthur Solaria's great-grandfather, the wealthy Gabriel Abramov. Documents prove that Abramov bought the house from an Azeri in 1903. He reconstructed the front of the house the same year. Even the architectural blueprints of the reconstruction have been preserved. Soviet authorities confiscated all of Gabriel Abramov's possessions, including his cotton and lemonade factories, and, in 1933, in support of the International Organization to Aid the Revolution, nationalized the building he lived in, 29 Ruben Street (now 25 Pavstos Buzand Street).

Furthermore, Gabriel Abramov and ten other wealthy Yerevantsis took it upon themselves to construct a drinking water pipeline to Yerevan . They brought cold spring water to Yerevan from the region called Krbulagh in special pipes ordered from Japan . According to the contract, the Soviet government was obliged to return the investment of the eleven patriotic philanthropists by 1947. But, in a manner all too familiar by then, that money was also nationalized.

Over the years, immigrant families from Western Armenia started settling in what was once the yard of the building, paying rent for the accommodations. An archival document regarding these tenants has also been preserved. After independence, when residential areas were privatized all at once, Arthur Sildiryan, just like everyone else, received a deed stating his ownership of an area of just 76 square meters. In an attempt to right this historical injustice, Sildaryan requested archives dated later than 1933 from the Spendiaryan Local Working Committee. "No documents were found in the archives from 1933 to 1994," Sildiryan related. "In my opinion, it is possible that they were destroyed on purpose. We have asked them to restore the documents, but they have refused. 'We have nothing to do with Czarist papers' they explained."

Since the implementation of this project began, certain people have persistently attempted to photograph the inside of Arthur Sildiryan's home. He has refused to let them in. "Those people claimed to be from an independent organization that had a contract with the OIP to photograph our home for a real estate appraisal. I refused, saying that I would invite another independent organization myself. They replied by saying that they had a signed contract with the OIP. When I asked them to show it to me, they couldn't produce it. They did not produce copies of that contract, or of their license to operate, even when they were ordered to do so by the Court."

On the day we met with the Sildiryan family, they had received a reminder from the OIP that they were to leave the area within five working days or lose their claim to compensation worth $14,500 . But Sildiryan is standing firm, "They can keep the money, I'm not scared. I am going to fight for the recognition of the rights of my ancestors to the land these people want to use."

A Fight for Justice

Arthur Sildiryan hopes to reclaim his great grandfather's property. According to Armen Tumanyan, a civil claims judge in the Court of Appeals, "The citizen has no legal basis for his case, because the government recognizes Sildiryan's right to ownership regarding only 76 square meters of property. The rest of his case is emotional." The judge added that there are sixty similar cases under appeal, but the petitioners have achieved nothing.

Following independence, it was assumed that the historical injustices of the former Soviet system, especially regarding the right to private property, would be corrected, but the authorities decided to sidestep the issue. Tariel Barseghyan, the head of the Department of Civil Rights and a candidate of the Science of Law, explained, "Both government bodies and non-governmental organizations have tried to tackle this issue. The problem is that unlike some of the other Newly Independent States, particularly the Baltic republics, where a law was passed regarding the return of nationalized property to its previous owners, the Republic of Armenia passed no such law. There were objective reasons for this - property that had been nationalized and "belonged to everyone" had already been redistributed by the government to other subjects for use. Those who acquired it subsequently, after independence, and received certificates of ownership, are conscientious people and are not to blame for the injustice which the former Soviet government subjected the previous owners to."

According to Barseghyan, the newly independent government of Armenia lacked the economic strength and the courage to correct this historical injustice. "In order to be fair to both the previous owners and those who acquired the property in good conscience, the government should have compensated the new owners at the current market rate and returned the land and real estate to the previous owners."

In an attempt to at least partially satisfy the claims, the government passed the Law on the Reestablishment of Defendant Rights. The new law, which experts found to be far from perfect, failed to provide a solution to the problem.

In the years since independence, no bill regarding the return of nationalized property has ever been discussed. This issue would probably never have been addressed if the issue "alienation of property in the interests of the State" had not arisen, regarding appropriation of land for construction work on Northern Avenue in the center of Yerevan . It has become a very personal issue - if this land is being acquired by new owners, and the government does not have the means to compensate the previous owners, why shouldn't the wealthy buyers provide them with compensation themselves? Especially because the number of owners who lost their property during the Soviet times has decreased noticeably - some have received property in other parts and moved away, the descendants of others have emigrated, and so on. "There has to be some kind of law, otherwise it would be considered discrimination - some people would get some kind of benefits with no legal basis, others would get none simply because they have not had the chance to ask for them," Tariel Barseghyan explained. "Since political will has not become law as yet, nobody can bear responsibility for the injustices committed by the previous regime, to which the Republic of Armenia is the legal successor."

He is convinced that there must be a legal act for each individual case. "According to our legal code, the demolition of each residence requires a separate law. That law must clearly describe how to deal with owners, users, people with temporary or permanent registration there, as well as previous owners, who can each claim a right to ownership using various documents."

The OIP has not presented the Sildiryan family with any legal act regarding the appropriation of their property that contains any mention of how to deal with previous owners. Instead, using every available opportunity, those undertaking the implementation of the project keep saying, "You've lived in the center of Yerevan long enough. Go, let someone else come and live here." The Sildiryans have nowhere to go - the proposed compensation is not enough, and they have no savings, having sold everything to finance medical treatment for their child.

Meanwhile, the organizers of this appropriation, or rather the intermediary, OIP, is "cleaning up" the center of Yerevan with astonishing speed, ridding it of its historical monuments, creating unsolvable problems that are not just historical and cultural, but also moral.