In response to a question during a meeting with the residents of Kajaran and environmentalists whether he thought it was right emptying this village, given that our check-points were only 2-3km away, Suren Khachatryan, the governor of Syunik, said the following, “What do check-points have to do with the village. Providing there are no residents in the villages behind Horadiz, does it mean that we have to give up the check-points? We have many borders that have no villages behind them. Starting with Meghri, the Araks bank, there are positions in mountains too, there are no villages behind those positions, but they are defended, aren’t they?” In response to a question of an environmentalist where was the border safer, where there were people or where there were no people at all, the governor said, “The safe is when we have patriotic soldier, when we relied on villager we lost sea-to-sea Armenia, now when we rely on soldier, soldier will defend the country.” Styopa Safaryan, the head of the Heritage faction, commenting on the governor’s words during a conversation with Aravot.am, assessed those as “pearls of thought”, “I am sorry, but his thinking is very characteristic of this government and this establishment, because basically he should be thanked for voicing what this government doesn’t say at a higher level, but thinks the same way. Seeing how they ignore the emigration in the bordering villages, one just understands that these people have a money problem. They think if there had been a mining company then, they would have rescued the sea-to-sea Armenia. Actually those who defend the country are Armenian people, villagers, because they have the least to defend in this country. Life has always shown that it is the type that maintains the country.”
Stepan Safaryan also said that he was originally from a bordering village and he saw how villager defended the borders in the Armenia-Azerbaijan bordering zone where there were neutral territories, pasturing cattle, mowing grass and plowing, “Soldier is convinced that there are people defending that border alongside with him. If this government pins its hopes on soldier, not to mention on such an army, the concerns about which have risen to the apogee, to defend the borders, then this establishment should do nothing, but resign their offices, in order that the country is governed by the people who will appreciate the value of villager, the value of bordering village and will not allow themselves to express such pearls of thought in front of the society.”
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Hripsime JEBEJYAN
