THIS SIDE OF BARS

Lragir.am
09 June 06

There is not a single government agency or office which attends to the
social problems of former inmates, therefore former prisoners have set
up This Side of Bars NGO. The chair of this organization Gevorg
Koshkaryan met news reporters June 9.

Film director Armen Mazmanyan was with Mr. Koshkaryan. The chair of
the NGO said their key purpose is to create jobs for former prisoners,
help them find jobs and earn a living. And creative people understand
their problems more quickly and deeply. It turned out that the NGO had
achieved a lot, and all thanks to good will of some people and
willingness to share their problems. It also became known that
fortunately not only Armen Mazmanyan is such. Sos Sargsyan helps
them. Nadezhda Sargsyan admits children of former prisonersto her
school free of charge. There are other benefactors too, and there is
a small production unit under the NGO, they publish a newspaper
entitled Return and discuss their problems. The newspaper is free of
charge. About 50 former prisoners were accommodated in a
dormitory. There were marriages too. But the road to the dormitory is
in a hopeless state. `If we get the materials,we have good masters and
we can do it ourselves,’ states Gevorg Koshkaryan.

Armen Mazmanyan says it is necessary to help these people to integrate
with the society. `These are people who made a mistake and served
theirsentence. Integration should be a strategic government
policy. By rejecting these people and labeling them as convicts we
make them repeat their mistake. And failure of integration is a bomb
behind our backs, which is going to go off one day.

‘And Gevorg Koshkaryan believes that the members of their organization
will not commit another crime.