The Toronto Star, Ontario
July 30, 2005 Saturday

Broken dreams in Armenia

by Michael Mainville, Special to the Star

YEREVAN, Armenia

Naira Yeremyan knows her home doesn’t look like much, but it’s all
she has.

A ramshackle collection of wooden boards, concrete slabs and
mismatched bricks, it sits amid the winding streets of Kond, a
desperately poor neighbourhood perched on a hilltop overlooking the
Armenian capital, Yerevan.

What the neighbourhood does have is a view. Below Kond, the city
stretches for kilometres onto the Armenian plains. In the distance
sits the ice-capped peak of Mt. Ararat in Turkey.

The view has property developers salivating over the prospect of
erecting luxury apartments in Kond. And that’s the bane of Yeremyan’s
existence.

“This house is 60 years old. My grandfather and grandmother came here
to escape the genocide in Turkey,” says Yeremyan, 37. “My mother was
born here. I was born here. This home is part of our family. And now
they are saying we cannot live here, that we have to leave and get
almost nothing in return.”

Three months ago, local authorities told the 14,000 residents of Kond
they would have to vacate their homes by the end of the year to make
way for modern housing. In exchange, they will be given payments of
between $2,400 and $6,000.

“You cannot buy a house anywhere in Yerevan for that much. We are
going to be homeless. They are throwing us out on the streets,” says
Yeremyan, who shares both the house and a monthly pension of about
$30 with her 63-year-old mother.

Yeremyan has organized sit-ins, petitions and court challenges, but
her protests have fallen on deaf ears. Those behind the project are
among the wealthy businessmen who control much of Armenia’s economy.
Government connections let them operate as they please.

“The authorities will not listen to us,” Yeremyan says. “There are
corrupt and influential people behind this and they can do whatever
they want.”

Kond is hardly unique. Armenians across the country face similar
obstacles – crippling poverty, endemic corruption and powerlessness
in the face of what critics say is an increasingly authoritarian
government.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When independence came after the
break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia seemed a dream come
true for a people with a tragic history. Less than a century after
the Armenian genocide – when the Turks killed between 500,000 and 1.5
million – the world’s 4 million-member Armenian diaspora finally had
a national homeland. But instead of thriving, Armenia languished. Its
politics are moribund, dominated by President Robert Kocharian, a man
critics accuse of falsifying elections and cracking down on
opponents. The economy, though improving, is in shambles. Almost half
the population lives on less than $2 a day.

The result has been a mass exodus – the reverse of early hopes for
Armenia. Instead of hundreds of thousands of dispersed Armenians
flocking to the country, more than 1 million have left for Russia and
the West. According to some estimates, the country has lost more than
30 per cent of its working-age population.

“People are leaving because they don’t see any hope for the future,”
says Avetik Ishkanyan, chair of the Helsinki Committee, a human
rights group. “And the worst part is that the ones who are leaving
are from the most active part of society – these are the people we
need to bring about changes in this country.”

Critics lay much of the blame at Kocharian’s feet. They say the
president – elected for a second time in 2003 – is running a corrupt
and despotic regime, giving free rein to businessmen close to him and
stifling any dissent.

“There is a huge gap between those in power and the majority of
Armenian society,” says Stepan Demirchian, the leader of the
opposition Justice coalition and son of a Kocharian rival killed in
1999 when gunmen attacked parliament. “And when we try to resist,
when we try to bring democratic change, they respond with violence.”

In April 2004, inspired by the peaceful Rose Revolution in Georgia,
tens of thousands of Armenians took to the streets to denounce
Kocharian and voting fraud in 2003 elections. Kocharian called in
police to break up the protest with stun grenades and water cannon.

“More than 600 citizens were arrested, political party offices were
ransacked, journalists were beaten,” Demirchian says. “And, after all
these acts of violence, the authorities tell us we have to be
patient, that it is a long road to democracy.”

Government officials insist the crackdown was needed to maintain
order, and say opposition parties are simply trying to seize power
for themselves.

Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan says the opposition uses the
pretence of supporting democracy to gain support abroad as they
attempt to overthrow the government. He says he knows Armenia’s
democracy is not perfect, but believes it is improving.

“The government is stable and the country is on the path to becoming
fully democratic,” he says. “A lot has been done, but a lot remains
to be done.”

Under pressure from the West, Armenia will hold a national referendum
this year on a package of constitutional amendments designed to limit
the power of the presidency and protect judicial independence.
Oskanyan says the reforms will be key to ensuring democratic growth.

“Once we complete our constitutional reforms, Armenia will move
forward in leaps and bounds,” he says.

Opposition leaders say the reforms are only symbolic and see the
referendum as a potential trigger for the kind of mass protests that
drove out authoritarian governments in Georgia and Ukraine.

Aram Sarkisian, leader of the radical Republic Party, says opposition
parties are gearing up to organize mass demonstrations after the
referendum, which he says is sure to be fraudulent.

“The situation in our country is terrible. People are leaving because
they have no hope,” he says. “Armenian society is ready for
revolutionary change, peaceful and civilized change.”

Sarkisian says he met with White House and State Department officials
during a June trip to Washington and emerged confident of American
support for a revolution.

“The United States supported the Georgians and the Ukrainians and
they will help the Armenian people,” he says.

Still, experts say it’s unlikely the opposition can organize a
successful revolution or win Western support. Fractured by
in-fighting and with no clear leader, the opposition is more likely
to fall apart before posing any threat to Kocharian.

“The opposition is too weak and the government is just democratic
enough to keep the West from supporting drastic changes,” says a
Western official in Yerevan, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Chatting over rich coffees in Yerevan’s trendy ArtBridge Cafe, a
group of students and recent graduates agree that a revolution is
next to impossible.

Unlike so many young Armenians, they’ve decided to stay and try to
build their country.

“I will not leave Armenia, I want to do things for my country, make
it a better place to live,” says Artak Ayunts, a 26-year-old
university lecturer.

But the group is skeptical about radical changes. They don’t believe
Armenians are ready for a revolution and say it could take decades of
slow progress before the country is free and relatively prosperous.

“People don’t believe in themselves, they think someone else should
always make changes for them,” Ayunts says.

Jokes philosophy student Gevorg Abrahamyan:

“The biggest problem with Armenia is the Armenians.” Michael
Mainville is a Canadian journalist based in Moscow.

GRAPHIC: Michael mainville for the toronto star Residents of Kond, a
ramshackle neighbourhood in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, fill
water bottles on a hot summer day. Some 14,000 residents of the
neighbourhood, which has stunning views of Mt. Ararat in Turkey, are
being forced out to make way for luxury housing.