The US State Department's 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report places Armenia on its "Watch List" (countries that require special supervision).
101 farmers in the Bambakashat and Janfida villages of the Armavir province harvested a smaller-than- expected tomato crop this year, bearing an average loss of 52 million drams.
"Several days ago we held a demonstration to persuade government officials to stop the construction of a café in front of the Chamber Music Hall, but instead of an appropriate response, the construction work intensified," said singer Arax Davtyan angrily.
On October 18 the musicians who gathered near the Yerevan Chamber Music House demanded the immediate termination of the constructions of a cafe which stretches from the entrance of the Chamber Music House to Abovyan street, because it is disturbing their work.
Ararat Tsovyan feeds his family by repairing eyeglasses. His shop at 15 Pushkin Street was demolished on government orders, as part of the work on Hyusisayin (Northern) Avenue. He was given the dram equivalent of US$ 8200 as compensation, as well as the right to rent a 20-square-meter property adjacent to 15a Pushkin, in order to open another shop.
The Armenian justice system has failed George and Carolann Najarian once again. On August 30, 2005, the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia ended proceedings of the criminal case, citing the absence of any fraud on the part of Grigor Igityan. The Armenian-American couple had accused Igityan of the fraudulent misappropriation of their property.
Siranush Musayelyan, recruiter. From the village of Lusagyugh, near Echmiadzin. Sentenced twice before.
“And so in the beginning of 2003 the next phase of my activities began. I called Anahit Mlkhasyan, a Dubai pimp, and got Nune Kcheyan's phone number in Yerevan, which I can’t recall now. I called Nune, and asked her to find girls for me and send them to Dubai, so that they would do prostitution for me. She demanded $1,000 for each girl she would recruit.
On May 25 2005, The Court of First Instance of the Kotayk Province, Judge Gagik Heboyan presiding, reviewed the request from the Abovyan prison and released prisoner Marietta Musayelyan before she had completed her sentence. Muselyan had been wanted by the police since 2003 and was sentenced to one year and six months in prison. She served only seven months.
On July 8, the court completed its review of the case against well-known Dubai pimp Aisha, whose real name is Lusine Hakobyan. (See Also “ Another pimp in Court”). Judge Vazgen Lalayan of the Court of First Instance of Yerevan’s Nork Marash and Kentron Districts sentenced Aisha to a one-year probation. She is now free to get back to business.
On June 20th, in the Court of First Instance of Yerevan’s Nork Marash and Kentron districts, with Judge Vazgen Lalayan presiding, the case of notorious Dubai pimp Lusine Hakobyan (aka Aisha) began.
"One day my sister Arus came with a girl, her name was Anna. Arus said 'She'll be your wife.' I slept with Anna that day. She was my first girl. I haven't been with a woman since," 24-year-old Arsen Gevorgyan told us, the second time we met.
"I will definitely participate in the elections. I've already decided who I will vote for," said 23-year-old Nelly Galstyan.
"They sold everything man made, and now they are going for what God has created. This is God's work and God will definitely punish us if we let this wonder of nature disappear," said Karen Manvelyan, both as the director of the Armenian office of the World Wildlife Fund and as a citizen of Armenia.
"We demand that free frequencies be immediately made public and that a public, transparent, and open tender be declared," read a statement by the organizers of a protest marking the third anniversary of A1+ TV's being taken off the air.
Forty children, all of them boys, are ill with hepatitis in the Armenian College of Calcutta over the last few months. The cause of the epidemic is still unclear.
"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 Armenian mouflon, the Bezoarian goat and the Caucasian bear are all in the Red Book (Armenia 's list of endangered species). But with Safari International, you can hunt them for a few thousand Euro.
"The first 1,000 drams I earned, I gave to my father. He asked where I got it, and I said I earned it," 15- year-old Narek says proudly, with emphasis on the word "earned".
The Poghosyan brothers, Edgar and Vazgen, decided to start a small business. They wanted to open an auto repair shop, and applied to the Yerevan mayor's office to lease a plot of land.
"The only thing about our classroom that makes it like a classroom is the size. Everything is falling apart. There is no glass in the windows-they're covered with plastic. There's barely a ceiling - it leaks when it rains. It doesn't look like a school; you come into the room and everything - from floor to ceiling-is in ruins," says Mariam Mkrtchyan, a graduate of the elementary school in Ltsen.
"My only dream is to see a school in Salvard; then I can die in peace. That's it, that's all I want," says Armik Asatryan, a math teacher in the village for fifty-four years.
The lane of trees planted in memory the 131 Catholics of the Armenian Apostolic Church on the grounds of the Cathedral of Saint Gregory the Illuminator no longer exists, having dried up or disappeared over the course of two weeks.
"400 square meters of our yard has disappeared. We don't have a courtyard anymore, they just left a narrow path between the garages," complain residents of Yerevan 's # 27A Mashtots Avenue. There are now eleven garages made of stone and two of metal between the buildings at 27A and 29 Mashtots Ave.
Hetq Online received a number of letters in response to our articles on the Armenian College of Calcutta. The authors are concerned about the current situation there, but stress that everything should be done in a way that would rule out the possibility of closing the educational center, which has been in operation since 1821. They are particularly concerned about the violence against the children, and the state of their physical and psychological...
The charitably run Armenian College in Calcutta, India was established in 1821, through a bequest from the will of Astvatsatur Muradkhanyan, a wealthy Armenian from Jugha. Later, the Davidyan School for Girls and the Galutsyan School merged with the college.
"We were playing Rugby in the seminary yard and the ball hit me in the left ear. I felt a stab of pain, and fell into the mud; then the boys sat me down on the stairs. Then one day when we were playing, my friend Harutik whispered something in my left ear, I couldn't hear it, I couldn't hear it at all.
AGBU London is pleased to host a presentation on poverty in the republic of Armenia. The speaker, Onnik Krikorian is a British photojournalist living in Armenia for the past five years. He identifies some of the crippling poverty and its probably long term consequences in Armenia today.
"I stood here for two days from sunrise to sunset to prevent them from destroying my land. They promised that they wouldn't, but they destroyed it at night when I went home. I came the next morning and saw that my green garden had been bulldozed. I almost had a heart attack," says Anik Ohanyan, who lives at # 14 David Anhaght Street.
"Before a final solution is found, it is necessary to fence in the dump, to dig gutters and to study the body of the landslide. In order to carry all this out, we will need 10 million drams (about $18,000)," says Ludwig Nazaryan, the head of the Division of Technological Disasters of the Department for Emergency Situations (DES).
"The toxic-waste dump containing 500 metric tons of insecticide, located east of the Vardashen-Verin Jrashen neighborhood in the district of Erebuni, is on the verge of collapse," says geologist R. Yadoyan.
"The 21st century will be the century of Armenian archaeology. Many nations have already created Armenian Studies departments to learn about their past.