YEREVAN HAS TURNED INTO A CITY OF EXPULSIONS

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Four days ago the representatives of the Compulsory Services threatened the gardeners of Gjurdjian St. to pull down their territories on April 1 which have thousands of fruit trees.

The threats have begun since the autumn of 2004. A case was brought against 14 gardeners, and 6 gardeners have already received a decision of expulsion. About 400 – 500 families are doomed to become homeless.

The gardeners organized a protest on this score in front of the Residence of Robert Kocharian demanding a fair solution to the problem. They have turned to the City Hall, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Justice many times but all in vain. The gardeners are forced to release the territories cultivated by them for 30 years in order to restore the former view of the territories and they are told that this action is motivated by the fact the gardeners illegally took the forest territories. Whereas the gardeners claim that those territories were not forests before, they were simply sloping places of 50 – 60 degrees full of snakes and scorpions, stones and garbage taken from the community Nor –Nork. “Before our moving here there were many cases of infant deaths because of infection registered in the maternity hospital of Masiv. It is already 10 – 15 years we haven’t had such cases as we cleared the territory, planted trees and enriched it with oxygen,” said the gardener Svetlana Movsisian.

They made an application to privatize the lands in the Soviet period and the Government only cheered them up. By the way, the gardeners have annually paid 14 thousand AMD as a rent. They also turned to the Chief of the district Nor – Nork David Petrosian with the same question who apologized them saying that the matter is beyond his responsibilities and liabilities and it must be solved by the City hall.

Today 3 gardeners handed a letter to the representative of the President’s Office where they were told that their matter would be discussed after the arrival of the representative of the City Hall. “The President may not be aware of the occurring, his heart remorse may wake up, let’s ask him not to make us vagrants, otherwise we shall turn to all the embassies asking for political asylum in their countries,” said Seda Melikian. Let us mention that she sent a letter to the President 2 months ago and got the same answer.