New scandal erupts in Yerevan over forced eviction of residents
By Mushvig Mehdiyev
Yerevan’s citizens face yet another challenge now, as the new redevelopment plan will include their eviction.
Armenia’s capital was swept by a new scandal when residents of the city center opposed the plan from officials to evict families from their home in order to carry out a real estate development project.
The government has authorized Yerevan executive office to sign a contract with Renshin Ltd. to oversee the construction of a hotel in the city center. The contractor has offered the residents monetary compensations and replacement of their apartments in view of paving the way for hotel's building.
But several residents have been reluctant to agree, especially since it appears the company is not being fair, offering second rate apartments and poor monetary compensations.
People living in a two-storey residential building at 25 Tumanyan Street in Yerevan said they will continue to struggle for their rights. Irate residents announced that they will not give an inch of their space so that a hotel complex can be built in the area.
"Residents suddenly shocked with the news that the basement of their building will be a hotel for the sake of some organization's desire," Head of the Victims of State Needs Non-Government Organization, Sedrak Baghdasaryan said. He also was evicted from his city center home along with his family in the 2000s under a controversial law.
Baghdasaryan noted that the basement of the building was sold to the organization under a government’s decision in 2012, but that citizens had refused to sell their apartments on the first floor.
“We are being evicted from our ancestral homes, in the center of Yerevan, and they offer a compensation of about $800 per square meter, which can in no way be considered adequate. As for apartments in a newly constructed building, then this offered space cannot even be compared to what we have now,” said resident Geravetyan. For example, he added, the apartment ceilings in the newly constructed building are 2.70 meters tall, while the height of the ceilings in their current homes is 3.30 meters.
Faced with such difficulties, the organization then decided to abuse the law by cunningly presenting the development project as an "exclusive interest", which, under Armenian law, excludes any alternative option for the residents.
Vardan Gabrielyan, another resident at 25 Tumanyan Street, said that 22 families are going to send a letter to the National Assembly in protest.
The Our City public-civil initiative called on the resident to avoid signing any document with the contractor company, the municipality or any other structure. Activists say this is not the first time such a deliberate scenario is developed to force people to vacate their homes in Yerevan. Other places including 23 and 25 Teryan Street, 37 Lalayants Street, etc. face the same illegal attempts.
The residents at 25 Tumanyan Street announced that they will not hesitate to resort to more active means to defend their rights.
Yerevan residents have experienced similar injustices back in the 2000s, when hundreds of families in downtown Yerevan were forcibly evicted from their homes under the application of a controversial law. Many of them even claimed that no relevant compensations were ever offered them in return to their seized apartments.
Since then, the European Court of Human Rights has issued several rulings on wrongful evictions based on the applications of Armenian citizens.
Last November, the ECHR filed three separate cases against Armenia, making the country eligible to pay a total of 160,000 euros in compensation. All three cases involved a property located on Byuzand Street in downtown Yerevan. The property was reportedly expropriated by the state to be used in town planning. In all three cases, the plaintiffs did not get any state offer as a compensation for the seized property.
Serious human rights violations in Armenia have turned the country into a target for criticism by several international organizations, including the Freedom House, which approved the former Soviet state as a partly free country, lacking satisfactory conditions in terms of the civil liberties and political rights.
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