File this one under “Governmental Mismanagement of Overall Economic Structure”, meaning that things here are so bad, that people are doing what they have to just to get by.
Mr. President, this is what happens when you and your friend line your pockets with the wealth of the country and is another problem that you and your government will soon answer for.
ASSOCIATION OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS OF ARMENIA / HETQ ONLINE
http://www.hetq.am
20 January 2004
There is more than food for sale at the Bagratashen market
Every week, from two to three thousand people cross the Armenian border at Bagratashen, to do their buying and selling at the Sadkhlo bazaar. Alongside the trade outlets, there are about twenty restaurants in this Azeri-populated Georgian village, where every week, in addition to food and drink, a couple dozen Armenian girls are sold as well.
Alyosha, who lives in Armenia, frequents both the Armenian and the Georgian section of the bazaar. He trades goods, and finds new partners. He told us that Armenian girls from the neighboring villages populated mainly by refugees, and from Alaverdi and other parts of Armenia as well, come here in groups to work as bartenders or waitresses. The Azerbaijani owners of these establishments don't pay them for their work. Instead they provide a more profitable service - they find "customers" for the girls. S. is from Azerbaijan - he's a wholesaler of Ukrainian candy and a main "buyer" of Armenian girls. He said it's not hard get Armenian girls, even at a low price. "The commodity [women] is increasing. The more goods are available, the cheaper they are. God bless Gorbachov's father. In the past, when we lived better, the goods were more expensive." S. regarded me smugly, unaware that I was a journalist, and hoping to find out what I was doing there. As I asked him about the prices for girls and the customers he started bargaining with me in Armenian. "If you know some girls, bring them here. If the commodity is good I will pay $50 for one day. And then you leave the girl with me. I'll give you some candy, too."
S. gets two or three girls a day, but he always needs new ones. According to Alyosha, the unknown girls who rarely appear in Bagratashen are more valuable. "Are you looking for prostitutes here? They are in Turkey or the United Arab Emirates. Only the ones they don't need there come to Bagratashen," an Armenian trader told me. He said maybe the reason prostitutes come to Bagratashen or Sadakhlo without pimps is because "...they are not expensive and cannot be profitable." Azerbaijanis can have them for as little as 1,000-2,500 Drams (about $2-$5), or in exchange for food. Prostitutes in Bagratashen are unhappy with their situation, and speak with envy of their colleagues working abroad.
I spoke to one "bartender", Sveta, trying to find out why she had chosen this life. She grinned and asked me, "Will you come and feed my children?" and left. I asked Karo Gulkanyan, a police officer, what the local police and the national security service were doing to prevent this situation, and whether it was possible to keep prostitutes from entering the bazaar. He responded with a question of his own: "Should we keep people from earning a living? Do we have that right?" He noted that the prostitution is actually taking place on Georgian territory. "We can't stop a person who crosses the border legally," he said.
Lida from Bagratashen is a refugee. I introduced myself as someone looking for a child to adopt. She offered me her five-month-old daughter, Mariam, and began to bargain, eventually settling on 10,000 drams (less then $20). As a sort of justification, she told me her life story. She fled Baku in 1988. Now she lives in Bagratashen with her aging mother and four children, in a cottage built by the Norwegian Council on Refugees. The neighbors will have nothing to do with her; they are ashamed to be seen with her. But this doesn't bother Lida. In the past ten years, she has gotten used to humiliation. "What can I do? I'm young, I have no man, no one to support my children," the forty-year-old woman says. She had a good life in Baku. Then in Bagratashen she married Ashot from Karabakh and had two children - a boy and a girl. She and her husband didn't get along, and divorced. Her friend Seda suggested a way to support her family. Then she had another boy. Then a fourth and a fifth child, who she couldn't bring home.
"I decided to leave them at the hospital. It's hard to put them in an orphanage once you've brought them home," Lida explains. She claims that she found out later that the first child she abandoned was sent by the hospital doctors to France, for $400, and that the second child is in Yerevan. I could not confirm this, however, at the hospital in Noyemberyan where the children were born. Andranik Ayvazyan, head of the maternity department, was surprised that I had taken an interest in a woman with such a bad record.
As we were talking, Lida kept asking asked her 11-year-old son, Arthur, to make some tea for the baby. Finally, the boy lit a fire right in the middle of the room. Everything, including the infant, disappeared in smoke.
The Bagratashen village mayor, Hovsep Ogumtsyan, doesn't think that Lida is worth "treating as a human being or getting involved with." Furthermore, he says, he has nothing to do with the Bagratashen market, since it was transferred out of his jurisdiction to the customs department three years ago. Meanwhile, Lida is expecting another child.
Karine Simonyan
Mr. President, this is what happens when you and your friend line your pockets with the wealth of the country and is another problem that you and your government will soon answer for.
ASSOCIATION OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS OF ARMENIA / HETQ ONLINE
http://www.hetq.am
20 January 2004
There is more than food for sale at the Bagratashen market
Every week, from two to three thousand people cross the Armenian border at Bagratashen, to do their buying and selling at the Sadkhlo bazaar. Alongside the trade outlets, there are about twenty restaurants in this Azeri-populated Georgian village, where every week, in addition to food and drink, a couple dozen Armenian girls are sold as well.
Alyosha, who lives in Armenia, frequents both the Armenian and the Georgian section of the bazaar. He trades goods, and finds new partners. He told us that Armenian girls from the neighboring villages populated mainly by refugees, and from Alaverdi and other parts of Armenia as well, come here in groups to work as bartenders or waitresses. The Azerbaijani owners of these establishments don't pay them for their work. Instead they provide a more profitable service - they find "customers" for the girls. S. is from Azerbaijan - he's a wholesaler of Ukrainian candy and a main "buyer" of Armenian girls. He said it's not hard get Armenian girls, even at a low price. "The commodity [women] is increasing. The more goods are available, the cheaper they are. God bless Gorbachov's father. In the past, when we lived better, the goods were more expensive." S. regarded me smugly, unaware that I was a journalist, and hoping to find out what I was doing there. As I asked him about the prices for girls and the customers he started bargaining with me in Armenian. "If you know some girls, bring them here. If the commodity is good I will pay $50 for one day. And then you leave the girl with me. I'll give you some candy, too."
S. gets two or three girls a day, but he always needs new ones. According to Alyosha, the unknown girls who rarely appear in Bagratashen are more valuable. "Are you looking for prostitutes here? They are in Turkey or the United Arab Emirates. Only the ones they don't need there come to Bagratashen," an Armenian trader told me. He said maybe the reason prostitutes come to Bagratashen or Sadakhlo without pimps is because "...they are not expensive and cannot be profitable." Azerbaijanis can have them for as little as 1,000-2,500 Drams (about $2-$5), or in exchange for food. Prostitutes in Bagratashen are unhappy with their situation, and speak with envy of their colleagues working abroad.
I spoke to one "bartender", Sveta, trying to find out why she had chosen this life. She grinned and asked me, "Will you come and feed my children?" and left. I asked Karo Gulkanyan, a police officer, what the local police and the national security service were doing to prevent this situation, and whether it was possible to keep prostitutes from entering the bazaar. He responded with a question of his own: "Should we keep people from earning a living? Do we have that right?" He noted that the prostitution is actually taking place on Georgian territory. "We can't stop a person who crosses the border legally," he said.
Lida from Bagratashen is a refugee. I introduced myself as someone looking for a child to adopt. She offered me her five-month-old daughter, Mariam, and began to bargain, eventually settling on 10,000 drams (less then $20). As a sort of justification, she told me her life story. She fled Baku in 1988. Now she lives in Bagratashen with her aging mother and four children, in a cottage built by the Norwegian Council on Refugees. The neighbors will have nothing to do with her; they are ashamed to be seen with her. But this doesn't bother Lida. In the past ten years, she has gotten used to humiliation. "What can I do? I'm young, I have no man, no one to support my children," the forty-year-old woman says. She had a good life in Baku. Then in Bagratashen she married Ashot from Karabakh and had two children - a boy and a girl. She and her husband didn't get along, and divorced. Her friend Seda suggested a way to support her family. Then she had another boy. Then a fourth and a fifth child, who she couldn't bring home.
"I decided to leave them at the hospital. It's hard to put them in an orphanage once you've brought them home," Lida explains. She claims that she found out later that the first child she abandoned was sent by the hospital doctors to France, for $400, and that the second child is in Yerevan. I could not confirm this, however, at the hospital in Noyemberyan where the children were born. Andranik Ayvazyan, head of the maternity department, was surprised that I had taken an interest in a woman with such a bad record.
As we were talking, Lida kept asking asked her 11-year-old son, Arthur, to make some tea for the baby. Finally, the boy lit a fire right in the middle of the room. Everything, including the infant, disappeared in smoke.
The Bagratashen village mayor, Hovsep Ogumtsyan, doesn't think that Lida is worth "treating as a human being or getting involved with." Furthermore, he says, he has nothing to do with the Bagratashen market, since it was transferred out of his jurisdiction to the customs department three years ago. Meanwhile, Lida is expecting another child.
Karine Simonyan
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