30 historic and cultural monuments of the city of Yerevan have been destroyed so far, 9 are intended to be transferred and 5 are under threat of suffering the same fate as the above-mentioned. This bad condition of preserving monuments of the capital has urged the Union of Initiatives for Yerevan Preservation to organize a collection of signatures around Tamanyan Statue and in Mashtots Park in regard to Yerevan preservation issues. 5 civil initiatives, members of the initiative, will submit the signatures of citizens to the president of the Republic of Armenia, the prime minister, the National Assembly speaker and the mayor of Yerevan.
The representatives of the civil initiatives dealing with problems of preserving historic and cultural monuments of the city raised a set of urgent problems during a press conference that took place at Armat Club today. E.g., Sahrat Petrosyan, the head of the Moscow Theater Summer Hall Preservation civil initiative, stated, “The Closed Marketplace is under threat today, the building of the ministry of justice, which is a part of Sevan Hotel, is being destroyed right now.” At the same time, S. Petrosyan stated that tolerant attitude of the authorities was visible these days – now they at least listened to them.
In response to an observation of www.aravot.am whether it meant that the authorities wanted to cajole the society and the coordinators of such initiatives, S. Petrosyan said, “We met with the mayor a week ago. Certainly, I cannot say that it was efficient, since I wasn’t even offered an opportunity to speak, but the situation has changed compared to year 2005.” In response to our another question what result the society and such initiatives could yield, if they actually struggled against oligarchs who were explicitly sponsored by the authorities, S. Petrosyan said, “When we started to struggle against other issues in 2005, they didn’t reply to our letters at the time. Now at least the ministry of culture responds, regardless of the fact that it makes very funny responses with incomprehensible definitions. It is not like there are no results – for instance, the precedents of Republic Square and Trchkan. Now we struggle, in order that there are no new Mashtotses.”
Grigor Ghazaryan, the head of Our City civil initiative, enumerated addresses where constructions were already being carried out, as a result of which historic and cultural monuments of Yerevan were under threat – 3/1 Abovyan St., 26 Saryan St. etc.
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Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
