Article found at: http://www.armenianow.com/?action=viewArticle&AID=3442&CID=3301&IID=1213&lng=eng ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PAINFUL REFLECTION: EVICTED RESIDENTS HAVE BITTER MEMORIES ON ANNIVERSARY OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT By Gayane Abrahamyan ArmeniaNow reporter Published: 12 December, 2008 Mariam Gishyan, a mother of five has a mixed feeling of anxiety, insult and embarrassment, when she recalls the winter of 2004, the barricaded Buzand Street and the day they were thrown out [of their home]. “We don’t call it throwing out, it was a massacre for us, a deportation,” says Mariam, her voice still trembling with anger. For the Gishyan family it was deportation in the very sense of the word and the memories return this time of year and especially as Yerevan’s Northern Avenue has celebrated its first anniversary. “It was night. We heard noise, I realized from the sound the bulldozers were destroying my house, I hardly managed to pull my children away from the wall, the wall went down, my elder son’s foot remained under the ruins and broke,” says Mariam, whose family like hundreds of others who used to live on the territory under construction located in the Northern and the Main avenues was not only evicted, but also, as she says, “narrowly escaped and was thrown out”. The Gishyans used to have a 130 square meter house with about 1,000 square meters of land on Lalayants Street, but their right of property was recognized null and void in the interest of and the family of six lost its home in the very center of the town. “I have not been present at the courts, have not even been invited, that is, everything has been done without my knowledge in my absence, and they have decided whatever they wanted to,” says the widow, whose priority today is to not end up homeless. “We stay in the street if we don’t have money; how I can pay the rent? We stay with this or that relative; children spend the daytime and get food at Orran (social agency), but that’s not a life, it’s not a solution, we used to lead a normal live, why were we thrown away – for ‘state needs’?!” The words ‘for the state needs’ became synonymous to misery for people living in the area of the construction. Hundreds of people were deprived of their own houses without getting a proper compensation. There was enthusiasm about having beautiful buildings and streets, when in 2000 President Robert Kocharyan presented the program of Yerevan construction, and many of the residents in Yerevan were happy with the perspective; but enthusiasm didn’t last long for those whose homes stood in the way. “The Northern Avenue was build at the expense of our right for property and the lives of many; 8 people died of strokes or heart attacks during the ousting,” native of Yerevan Irina Yedigaryan says, recalling October 6, 2004, when Yedigaryan lost both her 150 year old house she had inherited from her fathers, and also her sister. “My sister was dying, and the doctors said she couldn’t be moved, it’s impossible to oust her, my sister would ask those who came to oust us to let her die in her own home, then they could do whatever they wanted to, but they threw us all out and my sister passed away that day.” For her 12-room house and 1,000 square meters of land located just on the crossroad of Teryan and Pushkin streets Yedigaryan was paid compensation in $12,000, when one square meter in the center of the city in those years cost at least 900 dollars. “Evaluators have not visited our home. My house both occupied a large area and was also included in the list of protected monuments, but they put the court decision before me and threw me out of the house,” says Yedigaryan. Almost all the court verdicts upon the appeals of the citizens end with the sentence: “To force to sign the contract

Back