On April 22, 2004 at about 1:00 in the afternoon, Ashot Manucharyan, a prominent political figure, was the victim of a murderous assault on Tumanyan Street in the center of Yerevan .
September 4, 2004 saw the grand opening of CS Media City, the compound where the television companies Armenia TV (director - Gagik Mkrtchyan), ArmNews TV (director - Eduard Saribekyan), and TV-5 (director - Nune Yesayan), the Media TV Advertising Company (director - Hovhannes Tovmasyan), the CD Records Center, the FM-10 Radio Station (director - Grigor Nazaryan) and the CS Publishing House (director - Vardan Aloyan) are located.
As we reported on August 28 th , a number of media outlets organized a joint protest in which ninety journalists went to Tsakhkadzor in nineteen cars. They drove around the town taking pictures of the forests that have been cut down and the houses of various government officials and businessmen that have gone up.
On August 24, 2003 , Armenian journalists were physically attacked once again. This time, in Tsakhkadzor, Gagik Stepanyan, a bodyguard of parliament member Levon Sargisyan, beat photojournalist Mkhitar Khachatryan of the news agency PhotoLur and reporter Anna Israelyan from the newspaper Aravot.
In a recent development, the head of the Department of Medical and Technological Supply of the Ministry of Health, Artashes Bisharyan, who was in charge of the distribution of medicine sent to Armenia through humanitarian channels, handed in his resignation.
"A tree saved my life. It was a thick tree - I hid behind it and all the shell fragments went into the tree. The tree was torn up and I managed to escape. It was a strong tree, it was a strong mahogany; it was torn up, but it saved my life," Vahe says. Since then he has worshipped trees. He suffered a head injury during the war and has been disabled ever since.
"In December 2003 Yerevan Mayor Yervand Zakharyan signed 150 decisions regarding allocations of land," we were told by a mid-level official in the Mayor's Office, who asked that we not publish his name. Why did the mayor sign so many decisions at the end of the year?
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...
Majoritarian by-elections to the National Assembly are to be held in Constituency No. 44 (Yeghvard) on August 29, 2004. As of July 26, the election campaign had officially begun. Becoming a member of parliament is a business in Armenia; thus, an Armenian-style business competition has been launched.
"I've always thought about opening an old people's home here in Berd. There was an old woman from Berd in the Chorrord Village of Yerevan who died of homesickness. I don't want to move these old folks to Yerevan. But I can't do anything. If I were some ten years younger, I would," Sister Hanna says, laughing.
Yerevan Mayor Yervand Zakharyan has twice announced to journalists that no parkland has been signed away during his tenure. Apparently, the mayor doesn't care about getting caught in a lie-we have written about decisions that he made regarding land allocations in Yerevan's green areas. Now we present you with another such decision.
The destruction of green areas in the center of Yerevan continues. Forty-year-old trees are being cut down; lawns are being dug up. Yerevan Mayor Yervand Zakharyan has twice announced to journalists that no parkland has been signed away during his tenure.
The Republican Center for Humanitarian Assistance of the Ministry of Health is in charge of the humanitarian assistance sent to the Ministry of Health by the United Armenian Fund (USA) and other donor organizations - it stores, itemizes and distributes the assistance. In 2001-2002, one billion drams worth of humanitarian drugs sent to Armenia expired.
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.
There are ten families living in the hotel in the town of Berd in the Tavush Marz, five of them refugee families from various regions of Azerbaijan. There is a rumor going around Berd that the hotel has been privatized, which has spread panic among its residents. The fate of these ten families is uncertain.
In a decision made on December 26, 2003, Yerevan Mayor Yervand Zakharyan parceled off an additional 2,050 square meters of land in the Hrazdan gorge for 25 years, adding to the 2,050 square meter plot already controlled by Akumb Complex, Ltd.
Eighty percent of the houses in the village of Nerkin Karmraghbiur in the Tavush Marz were destroyed during military operations.
Last November, Hetq reported that the Yerevan Mayor's Office had approved the results of the auction held on September 26, 2001 , and given 88-year-old Araksya Hairapetyan's garden to parliament member Harutiun Pambukyan.
In 1988, the square next to the Opera House was renamed Freedom Square . Freedom, because that's where the Armenian National Movement was initiated, which three years later declared the independence of Armenia .
"At one o'clock in the morning I went to the police department with a blanket - I wanted to give it to my son, to keep warm. They wouldn't let me in, so I stood outside by the wall, listening to my son screaming, and I couldn't do anything. Then some officers came out and sent me away," recalls 73-year-old Emma Grigoryan, a resident of the village of Shahumian in Artashat, with tears in her eyes.
Shown in the picture is the deputy chief of the Armenian Police, General Hovhannes Varyan. So far no charges have been brought against him by Armenian law enforcement agencies, and President Robert Kocharyan has not dismissed him from office, despite his active role in the recent violence.
Gagik Hakobyan's family lives in a vacant lot abandoned by a motor depot in the Achapniak district, near the garbage dump. As we have reported, five families live here.
Out of the entire amount of medicine that entered Armenia as humanitarian assistance in 2001-2002, one- billion-drams-worth expired before it could be used. Between August 2001 and November 2002, the Department of Medical and Technological Supply of the Ministry of Health headed by Artashes Bisharyan was in charge of the distribution of medicine sent to Armenia through humanitarian channels.
On March 16, 2004 , Bagrat Yesayan, an advisor to the president of Armenia , organized a round-table discussion on the subject of corruption in the pharmaceutical market, with health ministry officials, NGO representatives, and journalists participating.
When the ministry of health was moving into new offices in Government Building #3, a package of documents disappeared.
"I'm upset with everybody. Why should we have to live like this? We're already in the garbage dump, there's nowhere left to go. This is the end of the world," says fifteen-year-old Hamest.
There was smoke in the garbage dump. This part of the city emits smoke round the clock. This is Yerevan 's second largest garbage dump, after Nubarashen.
The December 11, 2003 Order # 1283-A of the Minister of Health established a commission to draw up an inventory at the Republican Center for Humanitarian Assistance.
"They said to my husband, 'You've got to take the blame, we've got your wife.' It was Armen Harutiunyan, a detective from the Mashtots district police. When my husband found out I was in the hands of the police, he took the blame on himself so I could go home to our daughter," Lusine Giulshadyan, 23, recalls tearfully.
Out of the entire amount of medicine that entered Armenia as humanitarian assistance in 2001-2002, one billion drams worth expired before it could be used.
"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.
Haig Der Manuelian is a partner in the real estate department of Holland & Knight LLC. A well-known lawyer and founding member of the Armenian Assembly, he is very active in Boston promoting Armenian issues. Our conversation took place in the building of the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA) in Watertown, the heart of Boston's Armenian community.
Ambassador Abbott-Watt joined Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service in 1974, and has served in Tajikistan, Serbia, Ukraine, Germany, and elsewhere. She gave this interview in January, on the occasion of her one- year anniversary in Armenia.
"My life is ruined. There's nothing I can do to change it. I'm lost, and I don't know how long I can live like this," says 38-year-old Mary Hovhannissian (the victims' names have been changed).
In the series We Know Who the Owners Are we presented the real owners of land in Oghakadzev (Circle) Park, the Opera Park and the public park near Babayan Street .
"Every time I had a client I wondered how Armenuhi could get away with it. How could she sell me like this and I couldn't do anything? I took the only chance I had and I escaped from that hell," recalls Narine Karapetyan, who had been tricked into going to the United Arab Emirates for prostitution.
"I've come to tell you that I'm going to kill someone," announced Artik resident Suren Sahakyan, the director of Aghats, Ltd., when he visited me on December 3, 2003 . I advised him to go to law enforcement instead, and he said he would inform the National Security Service. What had driven engineer Suren Sahakyan to this state? To make a long story short, the bureaucratic red tape that he has been enduring for five years now.
"My friend Armenuhi deceived me. She promised me a well-paid job in the United Arab Emirates. So I went. Once I got there she took my passport and forced me into prostitution to make money for her," recalls Narine Karapetyan (the victims' names have been changed).
What is Armenia for the Council?
Our efforts to find an ordinary citizen who was given land in Yerevan by the Mayor's Office have been in vain. Thus, we are prepared to offer a reward to any such citizen who comes forward, or anyone who provides leading information.
The sound of a violin could be heard in the twilight. The fiddler was wandering through the gravestones like a ghost. Nobody else was at the cemetery.
“Mkrtich Arakelyan came and threatened us, demanding that we sign papers relinquishing our rights to the land. We told him that we wouldn’t give our garden to anybody. He said once more that he would take the matter into his own hands and we would be paid afterwards.
This stone structure being built in the Circle Park is completely illegal. The Mayors Office has issued a general prohibition against building stone structures in public parks. According to the design approved by the city’s architecture department, a 40 square-meter café made of light construction materials was supposed to be built here.
Last August we asked the minister of ecology, Vardan Aivazyan, about the destruction of the green areas of Yerevan, and he said, “Unfortunately, those areas don’t lie within our jurisdiction.”
Freelance journalist Vahagn Ghukasyan left Armenia and arrived three months ago in Germany, where he has requested political asylum. His case is now being considered by the German court. As the journalist wrote me recently, “In my petition I described the persecutions, illegalities and intimidations committed against me by the law enforcement agencies of Armenia and presented irrefutable facts and documents to this effect.”
“I will not give up my land, I will pour acid on Avag Khachatryan when he comes,” says Sergey Avetisyan, who was a watchman in Hakhtanak (Victory) Park for 37 years.
The Max Group-Armenian businessmen from the United States and Lebanon-does business in the territories liberated by Nagorno Karabakh. In Soviet times, an excellent irrigation network was built in the area, supplying every village with water for their crops.
When people make plans to meet at the Meghedi (Melody) Café, they often refer to it as the Dashnaks’ café. In 1997 former Yerevan Mayor Vano Siradeghyan gave the 20-square-meter plot where the café now stands to a member of the Dashnaktsutiun Party, Mikayel Manukyan, to build a pavilion. We have been unable to find out who persuaded Siradeghyan to do so.
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