Armenians Inured to Spiralling Crime

ArmRadio.am
25.08.2006 18:42

Armenians Inured to Spiralling Crime
By Tatul Hakobian in Yerevan (CRS No. 354, 25-August-06)

Sergey Safarian, 46, returned from Soviet military service many
years ago an invalid. But his troubles worsened this summer when
his wife Gulnara was killed, leaving him unable to look after their
two daughters.

"I heard shots, ran out to the road, there were two people lying
dead there, one of them my wife, the other – a man. My wife was
hit by four bullets – in her hand, shoulder, stomach and forehead,"
Safarian recalled in his home in the village of Agarak.

"All the villagers flocked to where the shots came from. I took my
daughters and hurried home, so they didn’t see their mother covered
in blood."

The tragic incident occurred on August 8. Businessman Alexander
Givoyev, who also headed the public organisation The Protection of
Children’s Rights, was the assailants’ other victim.

The tragic death of Gulnara and that of another innocent woman in a
similar contract-style shooting has highlighted a disturbing tendency
– the media and the public’s seeming avoidance of any real discussion
about spiralling violent crime.

Officials say serious crime is lower than in other CIS countries,
but recently revealed that figures for the first half of 2006 show
a 100 per cent increase over same period last year – and that 60 per
cent of cases involved firearms.

According to preliminary findings, Givoev, who was heading with his
family for the northern town of Gyumri, had stopped his Grand Cherokee
jeep at a roadside fruit stall. A red unmarked vehicle pulled up beside
him. Those inside it opened fire, killing him in front of his wife and
children – as well as the unfortunate stallholder Gulnara Karapetian.

Now Gulnara’s mother Kalipse Karapetian is worried that there will be
no one to support her granddaughters with their mother dead and their
father an invalid. "Look, the grapes, pears in the garden are ripe
now," she told IWPR. " Their mother was going to pick them and sell in
the roadside stall, in order to buy clothes for her student daughter."

Gulnara was her family’s only breadwinner. Sergei Safarian’s pension
is only 5,000 drams (11 US dollars) a month. His twenty-year-old
daughter Narine, a deaf-mute from birth, gets the same allowance
from the state. His other daughter Marine is a student at Yerevan’s
medical college.

Grigor Zatikian, their neighbour and friend, said he was upset that
the fate of the grief-struck family had appeared to move no one but
neighbours and a few visiting journalists.

"Relatives and villagers helped organise Gulnara’s funeral and
committed her body to the earth with honour," he told IWPR. "Today two
invalids and a student live in this house. It is sure to collapse. Come
here next year and you’ ll see! Gulnara shouldered all the household
chores. She did the work a man is supposed to do – she pruned trees,
dug the earth."

On June 22, in another brazen daylight shooting, the son of a former
parliamentary deputy, Vahan Zatikian Sedrak, 26, was shot dead in
broad daylight in a crowded street in the Malatia district of Yerevan.

Twenty-four spent cartridges were found at the murder scene. One of the
bullets killed passer-by Karine Sargsian, 37, hitting her in the heart.

Karine Sargsian, who had been shopping, had bags of bread and
cabbage in her hands, when she was shot. She left behind three young
daughters. Several days after the murder, her husband Garush Antonian
published an article in the Azg newspaper, in which he said that
Armenian society was living by the law of the jungle.

Nikol Pashinian, editor-in-chief of the Yerevan opposition newspaper
Haikakan Zhamanak, wrote, "What was Karine Sargsian’s and her family’s
fault? Can an average citizen in this country feel he is a person
with rights, or is he just waiting to fall victim to criminals score
settling?"

Sona Truzian, press secretary at the general prosecutor’s office,
said the two murders were being investigated and she could not add
any new information, "I cannot say that these were contract killings
until the preliminary enquiry is completed."

Contract killings are common in Armenia, but they get surprisingly
little coverage on television and radio, which is mostly government
controlled.

Gegham Manukyan, an adviser at the popular Yerkir Media TV Company
and a parliamentary deputy, disagrees that serious crime is overlooked
but admits that producers face problems airing such stories: getting
timely information from the police and the reluctance of victims’
relatives to be interviewed.

Well-known Armenian actor Sos Sarkisian said it was time the public
woke up to threat of violent crime. " The people must stand up to
protest. Our people have become inured to such murders," he said.

Psychologist Karine Nalchajian said the public are concerned about
gangsterism, but feel there’s nothing they can do.

"A family, people in a certain circle, may talk among themselves,
express their outrage at what is going on, but our society at large
is not responsive, it does not believe that it can achieve things by
speaking out. The discussion of these matters generally does not go
beyond the family circle or a group of friends," he said.

Tatul Hakobian is a commentator for the Radiolur news programme on
Armenia Public Radio.

This article first was published at IWPR