YEREVAN HAS TURNED INTO A CITY OF EXPULSIONS

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02:42 pm 30 March, 2006

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.