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    Categories: 2022

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 01/18/2022

                                        Tuesday, 


Many Karabakh Armenians Still Lack Adequate Housing After 2020 War

        • Robert Zargarian

Nagorno Karabakh --Pedestrians walk past a poster bearing a flag of 
Nagorno-Karabakh in Stepanakert, November 24, 2020


Nearly 16,000 residents of Nagorno-Karabakh displaced by the 2020 war with 
Azerbaijan continue to live in temporary shelters or homes, a senior official in 
Stepanakert said on Tuesday.

Artak Beglarian, the Karabakh state minister, said that more than 20,000 others 
remain in Armenia 14 months after a Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the 
six-week war that left least 6,500 people dead.

Most of the displaced Karabakh Armenians are former residents of Karabakh’s 
southern Hadrut district and the town of Shushi (Shusha) captured by Azerbaijani 
forces. Others used to live in districts around the Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh 
Autonomous Oblast handed back to Baku after the ceasefire.

In Beglarian’s words, the Karabakh authorities provided 467 apartments for 
displaced people in 2021.

“At the end of last year we provided 108 apartments built by the All-Armenian 
Fund Hayastan,” the official told a news conference. “We will provide more than 
200 apartments in the coming weeks.”

“Right now 2,862 apartments are being constructed,” Beglarian said, adding that 
the authorities are on track to provide virtually all displaced families living 
in Karabakh with adequate housing by 2024.

The authorities also offer between 10 million and 15 million drams 
($21,000-$31,000) to families buying existing apartments or houses. The subsidy 
is well below home prices in Stepanakert and nearby settlements which went up 
after the war.

The prices are too high for the family of Lusine Hayrian. She, her husband and 
five children fled their village in Hadrut during the war and now huddle in a 
single room in a Stepanakert hostel.

“Nobody has visited us so far,” Hayrian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Nor 
have we heard any promises of a [new] home.”

Karabakh had an estimated 150,000 residents before the war that broke out in 
September 2020. According to Karabakh officials, at least 90,000 local civilians 
fled their homes and took refuge in Armenia during the fierce fighting. Most of 
them returned to Karabakh after the ceasefire.



Armenian Government Revives Plans For Health Insurance

        • Anush Mkrtchian

Armenia -- A newly refurbished hospital of the Yerevan State Medical University, 
October 17, 2019.


The Armenian government appears to have revived plans to introduce a system of 
national health insurance that would cover the country’s entire population.

Deputy Health Minister Lena Nanushian said on Tuesday that that the Ministry of 
Health has drafted relevant legislation and submitted it to Prime Minister Nikol 
Pashinian’s cabinet for approval.

“The proposed package is quite comprehensive and will cover 90-95 percent of all 
[medical] services,” she said, adding that this includes, among other things, 
heart and cancer surgeries as well as free medication for people suffering from 
chronic diseases.

Free healthcare would be financed by a 6 percent personal income tax. Public and 
private employers would pay half of the new tax to be levied from their workers.

Former Health Minister Arsen Torosian pushed for such a tax in 2019 amid strong 
opposition from mostly middle-class Armenians willing to only pay for their own, 
private health insurance. Pashinian’s government did not go ahead with the 
proposed measure at the time.

Speaking with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday, Torosian, who is now a 
parliament deputy representing the ruling Civil Contract party, said the 
government should tread carefully on the issue.

Armenia’s former governments also promised to introduce a national health 
insurance system. But they abandoned those plans in the face of financial 
constraints.


Armenia - Аn intensive care ward at the Arabkir Medical Center in Yerevan, 
December 9, 2021.

Public access to healthcare in the country declined following the collapse of 
the Soviet Union as cash-strapped Armenian hospitals were allowed to charge 
their patients. Most of those hospitals were privatized in the 1990s.

Only state-run policlinics are now required to provide medical services to the 
population free of charge. Healthcare, including surgeries, is also supposedly 
free for children aged 7 and younger. Their parents often have to make hefty 
informal payments to doctors, however.

Also, over the past decade the state has partly covered healthcare expenses of 
civil servants, schoolteachers and other public sector employees.

Nanushian said that the proposed insurance system would significantly improve 
public health in Armenia. She argued that many of its low-income citizens in 
need of medical aid do not visit doctors for financial reasons.

Davit Melik-Nubarian, a public health lecturer at Yerevan’s Mkhitar Heratsi 
Medical University, welcomed the plans for mandatory insurance but said its 
introduction should be gradual. He also stressed the importance of proper 
government oversight of medical services that would be covered by the new system.



Prosecutors Block Trial Of Former Armenian Police Chief

        • Naira Bulghadarian

Armenia - Natonal police chief Vladimir Gasparian meets with police officers in 
Kotayk region, February 23, 2017.


Prosecutors have refused to give the green light to the trial of Vladimir 
Gasparian, a former chief of the Armenian police facing corruption charges, 
saying that a criminal investigation conducted by another law-enforcement agency 
was flawed.

The recently formed agency, the Anti-Corruption Committee, charged Gasparian 
with six counts of illegal enrichment, embezzlement, fraud and other crimes in 
early December. In particular, it claimed that he acquired over 2 billion drams 
($4.1 million) worth of assets “by criminal means” when holding high-level 
positions in Armenia’s security apparatus from 2000-2018.

Gasparian denies the accusations. But he has avoided publicly commenting on them.

The Anti-Corruption Committee announced last week that it has completed the 
investigation and sent its findings to prosecutors for approval.

The Office of the Prosecutor-General told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday 
that it has sent the case back to the law-enforcement body for further 
investigation. It gave no reasons for the decision.

The Anti-Corruption Committee condemned the decision as “illegal and unfounded” 
and said it will ask a more high-ranking prosecutor to overturn it.

“We are more than convinced, though, that that will be fruitless because we 
believe key decisions on such important cases are made at the highest level of 
prosecution,” read a statement released by the committee.

Gasparian, 63, headed the Armenian police from 2011-2018, during former 
President Serzh Sarkisian’s rule. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian sacked him 
immediately after coming to power in May 2018.

Gasparian had served as military police chief from 1997-2010 and as deputy 
defense minister from 2010-2011.



Russia Insists On Mediators’ Renewed Visits To Karabakh

        • Heghine Buniatian
        • Astghik Bedevian

RUSSIA -- A woman looks at her phone as she walks across a bridge with the 
Russian Foreign Ministry building in the background, in central Moscow, on 
October 12, 2021.


Russia has reiterated that the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-heading the 
OSCE Minsk Group should be able to resume their visits to Nagorno-Karabakh as 
part of their peace efforts.

“We are concerned by the fact that the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group are 
still not able to visit the region, familiarize themselves with the situation 
there and map out steps that will help the parties establish people-to-people 
contacts and resolve humanitarian and some other issues,” Alexander Lukashevich, 
the Russian ambassador to the OSCE, told the RIA Novosti agency on Monday.

The co-chairs had for decades travelled to Karabakh and met with its ethnic 
Armenian leadership during regular tours of the conflict zone. The visits 
practically stopped with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the 
subsequent outbreak of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

The mediators planned to resume their shuttle diplomacy after organizing talks 
between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in New York in September. 
The trip has still not taken place, however.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian suggested in November that it is blocked 
by Azerbaijan. The Russian Foreign Ministry called afterwards for a “quick 
resumption of visits to Karabakh by the Minsk Group co-chairs.”

In a joint statement issued on December 7, the mediators urged the conflicting 
sides to allow them to visit the conflict zone “as soon as possible” and “assess 
the situation on the ground first-hand.”

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev mocked the mediating troika and questioned 
the wisdom of the Minsk Group’s continued existence last week. He again claimed 
that that Baku’s victory in the 2020 war ended the Karabakh conflict.

“They must not deal with the Karabakh conflict because that conflict has been 
resolved,” Aliyev told Azerbaijani television.

“If one of the parties says that the conflict has been resolved, there is no 
room for mediation,” he said. “Our position has been communicated to them.”

Armenia as well as the United States and France have publicly insisted that the 
conflict remains unresolved. Russian officials have made similar, albeit more 
implicit, statements.


Nagorno-Karabakh -- Bako Sahakian, the Karabakh president, meets with the U.S., 
Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Stepanakert, October 16, 
2019.

Pro-government and opposition members of the Armenian parliament suggested on 
Tuesday that Lukashevich’s comments were a response to Aliyev.

“Azerbaijan cannot avoid peace talks,” said Anush Beghloyan of the ruling Civil 
Contract party. “The international community will not deem the Karabakh issue 
closed because Azerbaijan tried to solve it by force.”

Tigran Abrahamian, a deputy from the opposition Pativ Unem bloc, said the 
Russian diplomat spoke after official Yerevan’s failure to react to Aliyev’s 
claims.

“I find it important that Russia sees the continuity of the process in the Minsk 
Group framework,” Abrahamian told reporters.

In Stepanakert, a senior Karabakh official, Artak Beglarian, said that Baku is 
continuing to object to the mediators’ renewed visits to the disputed territory.

“I think that after Aliyev’s recent statements and mockery of the Minsk Group 
co-chairs it’s about time these [co-chair] countries … not only visited Artsakh 
without taking into account Azerbaijan’s opinion but also recognized Artsakh’s 
independence or at least the realization of the Artsakh people’s right to 
self-determination,” he said.


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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