EVICTED FAMILIES DISMISS KOCHARIAN’S EXTRA CASH PLEDGE
By Ruzanna Stepanian

Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Aug. 14, 2006

Disgruntled families whose old houses have been torn down in an
ongoing redevelopment in downtown Yerevan on Monday bristled at
President Robert Kocharian’s pledge to slightly raise compensations
paid to them by his government.

In televised remarks broadcast late Friday, Kocharian announced
that the government was wrong to controversially levy a 10 percent
income tax from the already modest sums paid to hundreds of displaced
families. He said proceeds from the tax, worth about 1.3 billion drams
($3.3 million), will be given back to them in the next few months.

Kocharian’s remark that "the issue will be closed" with the payment
of extra cash seems to have angered those former house owners who
feel that the compensations offered to them were well bellow the
market value of their demolished properties. Vachagan Hakobian, head
of a group representing their interests, said it does not represent
a fundamental solution to their grievances.

"We are not fighting for 10 percent," Hakobian told RFE/RL. "We just
want the amount of compensation to be revised [upwards] and individuals
who committed illegal acts to be punished."

"They won’t deceive us with that sum. Of course, we will take the cash
because it was stolen from us. But we will continue our struggle to
the end," he said.

The pledge of extra money was Kocharian’s first public statement
on the controversy surrounding his government’s handling of the
redevelopment program that was effectively declared illegal by
Armenia’s Constitutional Court in April. Angry evicted residents,
backed by human rights activities, opposition politicians and
prominent public figures, have for months protested outside his
officials residence in the hope of clinching heftier sums.

The Armenian constitution stipulates that private property can
be confiscated by the state "only in exceptional cases involving
overriding public interests, in a manner defined by law, and with a
prior commensurate compensation." The court backed critics’ argument
that the process, marred allegations of high-level corruption,
has been regulated only by a government directive and is therefore
unconstitutional. Still, it stopped short of ordering the authorities
to return the increasingly expensive land to their former owners.

Some of those residents were baffled by the timing Kocharian’s
announcement and saw political motives behind it. "Elections are
coming up," one of them, Aleksandr Safian, said. "The president has
gone public to present himself in a better light. We don’t believe
in fairy tales."

Another man, Zohrab Vahanian, claimed that the Armenian authorities
are worried about lawsuits filed by several disgruntled families to
the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. "They have realized
that we can’t do anything against them only in Armenia and that things
work a bit differently there [in Strasbourg,]" he said.

Kocharian’s statement, whatever its motives, is totally irrelevant
to Gohar Gharibian and her family that were offered $14,000, barely
enough to buy a tiny apartment in a Yerevan suburb, for their now
demolished house in the city center. They rejected the sum and now
hope for a "just" verdict by the Strasbourg court.

"We didn’t sign any [compensation] agreements," said Gharibian. "They
came and threw us out. Our case is now considered by the European
court. That’s why I don’t care about that 10 percent."