ARMENIA: KARABAKH DISPLACED ENDURE “DIFFERENT KIND OF MISERY”
EurasiaNet.org
Nov 12 2013
November 11, 2013 – 9:11pm, by Gayane Abrahamyan
When Mariam Avanesian and her family fled to Yerevan from Azerbaijan 25
years ago this month, they thought they were lucky; they had escaped
physical danger, and left behind an apartment rather than “a grave”
in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. But moving to Armenia didn’t mean
the end of uncertainty for Avanesian’s family members, and tens of
thousands of others.
Many of those who escaped turmoil in Azerbaijan over two decades
ago have struggled to find a sense of equilibrium since then. In
the Avanesians’ case, roughly a month after they arrived at a camp
for displaced persons in the northern Armenian city of Vanadzor, the
devastating 1988 Spitak earthquake struck. The quake left 25,000 people
in the area dead, including the Avanesians’ seven-year-old son, Vadim.
Things didn’t get much better, financially, after that tragedy. For
the past two-and-a-half decades, the Avanesians – now a family of 10,
including four grandchildren, two surviving sons and their spouses —
have lived in two rooms in the basement of a building in the village
of Kasakh, 11 kilometers outside of Yerevan. Inside, the powerful
stench of sewage water permeates a pitch-black corridor frequented
by rats. The damp, concrete-floored rooms where they live have no
kitchen appliances, no toilet and no bathing facilities apart from a
bathtub in one room. Armenia’s Soviet-era government gave the family
the basement as a residence after the Spitak earthquake.
“There is no alternative. We either have to live in the streets or
here, but my grandchildren can no longer stand this,” a frustrated
Avanesian said. She believes the surroundings have affected her
three-year-old granddaughter, who, she claimed, does not speak and
“starts screaming with terror” when she steps into the corridor.
The 57-year-old Avanesian earns a meager wage as an office cleaner.
Like many other displaced Armenians, Avanesian blames the government
for her family’s lot. Along with what one son earns as a soldier,
their monthly income is roughly 160,000 drams ($393).
According to the State Migration Service, between 1988 and 1992,
an estimated 360,000 Armenians were forced to leave Azerbaijan, and
72,000 more fled their homes situated along the Armenian border with
Azerbaijan. The influx made up roughly 14 percent of the country’s
population in the late 1980s.
“Years ago, at least they remembered us and paid occasional visits,”
Avanesian said, referring social workers from both the government and
international organizations, “but now they have forgotten all about
our existence.” Armenian law does not require visits by social workers.
The Migration Service today has no budget for programs to assist those
uprooted by 1988-1994 Karabakh conflict. Amid widespread allegations
of mismanagement, a program that provided displaced persons with
apartments was suspended in 2010.
Officials maintain that the government has done “even the impossible”
to “integrate and support the refugees” in Armenian society. “Many
of the refugees fled [Azerbaijan] in whatever clothes they were
wearing at the moment — slippers and robes, and they not only needed
shelters, but also essentials,” said State Migration Service Director
Gagik Yeganian to EurasiaNet.org. “The country was facing a titanic
challenge; especially given the earthquake, which followed shortly
after the [1988] Sumgait and Baku pogroms [of ethnic Armenians],
left more than half a million people homeless.”
At first, refugees were mostly placed in hotels, resorts and camps in
Yerevan and the regions. Later, with financial support from the United
Nations and other international organizations, some 4,000 residential
buildings were built. Between 2004 and 2010, the government distributed
vouchers to 1,100 refugees and Internally Displaced Persons for the
purchase of apartments. The program cost the government, according
to Yeganian, between “$4 million to $5 million.”
Yeganian blames the 2009 global financial crisis for the decision to
discontinue the housing program. Government-funded classes to train
refugees to become hair-stylists, manicure-pedicurists and to arrange
flowers – occupations often in demand for women – and to teach basic
computer skills also have stopped.
Local and international non-governmental organizations now provide
most of the social-welfare assistance to refugees and IDPs. Among
the beneficiaries of assistance are the more than 100 refugee
families living in a hostel in Abovian, a town 16 kilometers from
Yerevan. Two women have managed to earn money as seamstresses for
household expenses after Save the Children installed sewing machines
and provided a sewing seminar.
The problem of housing, however, far outstrips such earnings.
Fifty-eight-year-old Hasmik Martirosian, a refugee from the region of
Shahumian, an area now cut in two between Azerbaijani and Karabakhi
forces, (the territory under Azerbaijani control is called the Goranboy
Region) lives with four family members in an 18-square-meter room,
sharing a toilet with a neighbor. She calls her accommodations “a
different kind of misery” from the terrors of war, but one that has
lasted for 21 years.
Yeganian estimates that it would take $25 million to provide
housing for all refugees; funds the government does not have. After
dedicating tens of millions of dollars since the 1994 cease-fire,
the international community no longer finances housing assistance.
One refugee-rights activist, Eleonora Asatrian, a coordinator
for Refugees and International Law, a network of 10 civil-society
organizations, believes that what international donors have given
should have been sufficient to “have completely and decently resolved
the housing issue” by now.
Citing refugee complaints, also made to EurasiaNet.org, Asatrian,
a former opposition presidential campaign manager, claims that many
people used “fake refugee documents” and paid bribes of between $2,000
to $5,000 to receive vouchers and apartments under the government’s
earlier housing scheme. State Migration Service Director Yeganian
dismissed such criticism as “routine speculations.”
Eighty-year-old Abovian hostel resident Boris Yesaian has lost
trust in official promises. In an inside jacket pocket, he keeps
copies of 15 unanswered letters he has sent since 2010 to government
representatives and the ownership documents for the two-story house he
left behind in Shahumian. He hopes the government will remember him,
he said. “At least before I pass away,” he added.
Editor’s Note: Gayane Abrahamyan is a freelance reporter and editor
in Yerevan.
Anahit Hayrapetyan is a freelance photojournalist based in Yerevan
and Berlin.