A STEP UP FROM THE CHAIN GANG: CRAFTS CREATED BY ARMENIAN INMATES PRISONERS PROUD OF HANDIWORK
Avet Demourian
Toronto Star, Canada
May 22 2006
YEREVAN, Armenia-Men in black turtlenecks bend over the workshop
tables, intently carving key chains, model ships, even an elaborate
walnut backgammon set.
These and other handicrafts will go for sale at the Prison Arts kiosk
at a weekend market in the centre of Yerevan, the capital. It’s part
of a new program to occupy the time of Armenia’s prison inmates.
The program is the brainchild of Justice Minister David Arutyunian
and the director of the ministry’s prison reform program, Nikolai
Arustamian. The inmate “is occupied, he creates and gets satisfaction
from this,” Arutyunian says. “For many, the financial aspect is
secondary.”
The prisoners weave wall hangings and craft watches, religious
medallions, slippers and leather cases for mobile phones and keys.
Each piece gets a label in Armenian and English identifying the
craftsman and describing what materials were used.
The label does not indicate the sentence being served by the artisan
or the crime – but the inmates eagerly volunteer that information.
“I’ve been `inside’ since I was 16,” says 34-year-old Fyodor
Matriashin, serving his sixth sentence for robbery. “I began making
wooden boxes when I first arrived, but I used to give them away. Now
I’m paid for them.”
Each of Armenia’s 13 prisons, home to some 3,000 inmates, had some
sort of manufacturing department when the country was part of the
Soviet Union, but production shut down and most of the equipment was
carted away after the federation broke apart at the end of 1991.
An advocacy group, the Assistance to the Prisoner Fund, started
prisoners making clothes and now is trying to revive the manufacture
of ceramics and bricks at Erebuni prison, a facility in Yerevan for
repeat offenders.
But it is the crafts workshops that seem to give prisoners the
greatest satisfaction.
“Just about everyone in the prison uses my cigarette holders,” says
Abel Pogosian, a 32-year-old serving his fifth sentence for assault.
“Now maybe someone on the outside will like them, too.”