Sacked Vardenis Locksmith Promises to Nail His Feet to Bench if Not Reinstated

Armen Yeranosyan, a native of the Armenian town of Vardenis and a former locksmith at the Sotk gold mine, has received a letter from Armenia's prime minister Karen Karapetyan, which says the locksmith should be reinstated in his job. However, speaking to Epress.am on Wednesday, Yeranosyan  complained that the management of the mine still refuses to give him his job back.

“I took the PM's letter to company director Anatoly Gogotin yesterday, but he said it meant nothing to him. They did not take Karapetyan's letter into consideration and again refused to reinstate me. I don't know what else to do; I have no idea how I am going to pay off my loans or provide for my sick mother,” the man said.

At the same time, Yeranosyan told our reporter that he had been offered another, 12-hour-a-day job by mine director Armen Melkonyan with a monthly pay of 150 thousand drams (about $300); “But I can't take that job; how can I work 12-hour shifts when I have a mother to take care of, I have cattle I can't leave for such a long period of time. I will go to Yerevan and nail my feet to a bench until the prime minister comes down to speak with me.”

In October, Armen Yeranosyan was forcibly admitted to Yerevan's Nubarashen psychiatric hospital after staging a 5-day hunger strike and stitching up his lips outside the Government building in protest of being unfairly fired from the gold mine. The Vardenis resident was allowed to leave the mental hospital only after the intervention of human rights activists from the Armenian Helsinki Association.