Epress.am News from Armenia
A group of veterans of the Nagorno-Karabakh war and their family members held a demonstration on Thursday outside the Government building in Yerevan demanding a meeting with prime minister Karen Karapetyan and warning of an indefinite sit-in in front of the office if their demand is not met.
A veteran with a second-degree disability, Gagik Harutyunyan, has been unable for a week to send his 4 of his 12 kids to school because the children do not have proper shoes, clothes, or other school supplies. Speaking to Epress.am, Harutyunyan’s wife, Armenuhi Manukyan, said the family had conducted a sit-in outside the government office in 2014, after which then-defense minister Seyran Ohanyan referred the family to the Zangezur Copper Molybdenum Combine from where the Harutyunyans’ began receiving a monthly payment of 250 000 drams.
In 2017, however, the combine stopped paying the money, leaving the disabled veteran with no means to provide for his family. “We have appealed to defense minister Vigen Sargsyan to be reissued the payments, but we haven’t received a response yet. We live on a 60 000-dram poverty benefit and my husband’s disability pension, which is barely enough to buy his medication,” Manukyan told Epress.am.
Sonik Simonyan, wife of another disabled NKR war veteran, told Epress.am that her family do not have a permanent place of abode, while the Government has promised to provide the family with an apartment if they present a 10-year permanent registration document.
“They say we would be eligible for an apartment if we had a 10-year permanent registration. How can we be permanently registered if we do not own a house? Whose address should be register at? So we are not registered, but when my son voluntarily went to the military commissariat, he was immediately granted a citizenship and drafted to the army. [Authorities] say we live in a safe country; what kind of a safe country is this when my kid lives in a basement and has acquired a disability as a result. This not a safe country for us but a miserable one,” Simonyan said.
Head of the Government Department for Reception of Citizens and Discussion of Petitions Aleksandr Ghazaryan came out to meet the demonstrators and urged them to submit their complaints and demands in a written form. The protesters then filed their appeals and left, warning that they would continue the protest actions should their appeals be left unresponded.