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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