I had been invited to a seminar entitled “Conflict clarification” in Yerevan to take place on December 5 to 7. To be honest, I was a bit uncomfortable since it would be the first time in twenty-one years that I wouldn’t be in Gyumri on December 7, the ...
The trial of a young man implicated in the beating death of Tigran Tadevosyan ealier this April has been postponed till sometime in 2010. The victim died in hospital after being in an unconscious state for ten days. Samvel Sargsyan is one of four young ...
The Ministry of Urban Construction is planning to build a neighborhood in the Shirak town of Maralik that will house senior citizens left homeless due to the 1988 earthquake that ravaged the provinces of both Shirak and Lori. The beneficiaries will be those ...
At a session of the Shirak Regional Council held in the provincial town of Amasia this past November 18, Gevorg Hovakyan, mayor of the tiny rural hamlet of Jradzor, made the following peculiar request of Shirak Regional Governor Lida Nanyan. Mayor Hovakyan, ...
A squabble has broken out in the small hamlet of Sizavet, located in the Ashotsk district in the northern reaches of Shirak Marz. The man who started all the trouble was Gagik Kotanjyan, the former village mayor. On October 23, the residents of Sizavet made ...
Today, at the Shirak District Court, the long delayed trial of former Gyumri District #1 police Chief Ashot Tapaltsyan and former investigator of the same unit, Simon Sargsyan, was resumed with Judge Harutyun Movsisyan presiding. The two former law ...
We’ve never stopped looking at poverty, since we’ve never known what it was to be rich. How we started out, that’s how we’ve continued - one cow, two sheep. We keep those in somebody else’s shed. We don’t have one. We have six hectares of land ...
During the past week, the "Vardanants" statue complex depicting Vardan Mamikonyan and other notable Armenian figures that participated in the Battle of Avarair against the Persians in 451 AD was missing the 40 kilo sword held by General Mamikonyan. Eye ...
Gtashen: Former Azeri village manages to survive The village of Gtashen lies a mere two kilometers from the Armenian border with Turkey, in the northern reaches of Shirak Marz. Four border posts are located with its confines. 2,000 hectares of the cultivated ...
“They talk of normalizing relations with Turkey but haven’t even solved the water problem here” The dome and cross atop the Saint Gregory the Enlightener Church in the village of Haykadzor have been damaged by gunfire. The credit for this act ...
When they started to build the Akhurian Reservoir along the Armenian border with Turkey, the residents of the village of Jrapi joked that they would soon become a seafaring community and might even raise a naval fleet. These were mere fleeting fancies, ...
The 6th annual Agro-Shirak Expo is now underway in Gyumri, affording both commercial and individual growers and agricultural agencies to meet, exchange ideas and knowledge and to market their wares. The expo is the brainchild of the Shirak Competition Center ...
It’s not all that difficult to find the house, better yet, the hut, belonging to Haroutyun Manoukyan, resident of Saratak. Ask anyone in the Shirak Marz village and they’ll immediately point the way to an empty lot behind the mayor’s office. Residents ...
For years on end, it has been the custom of local community leaders to rack up debts and then take flight, leaving the burden of responsibility on their hapless successors. In the 2008 local self-government elections, 104 community mayoralties were contested ...
The early Bronze Age monument at Kaps was discovered back in the 1980’2 during construction work on a reservoir some two kilometers from the village.
The most picturesque structure in the village of Meghrashat, close to the Turkish border in Shirak Marz, is the Sourb Astvatzatzna Church. Even though the belfry and walls were damaged in the earthquake, the church still amazes visitors with its massive size. ...
The line of mayoral succession in the village of Vardaghbyur, Shirak Marz, stretches back awhile. First there was Mayor Karlen Baloyan, then Mayor Sargis Baloyan, and now the banner of succession has been in the hands of Hrach Baloyan, village mayor since ...
After a devastating earthquake shook Gyumri in 1926, several trailer parks were set up in the city. Gyumri was rebuilt in Soviet times, but these trailer parks, also called barracks, were never dismantled, and they became a symbol of poverty.
For seventeen years now 78-year-old pensioner Lena Vardanyan has been living with her disabled daughter in a trailer in Gyumri's Barekamutiun Park.
Everyone knows Mushegh the shoe-repairman in the Avtokayan trailer park in Gyumri. Mushegh Kirakosyan and his family have lived here for thirteen years now.