“There weren’t so many accidents, so many disasters in Communist times, were there?” One can often hear such a question from the elderly. As a matter of fact, we have heard about different kinds of tragic accidents more often after 1985. However, it doesn’t mean that there hadn’t been tragedies before that. It is just that they were carefully concealed; the government had the ability and desire to conceal unpleasant events from the Soviet people, sparing those people’s nerves and trying not to spoil the country’s international image.
We hear almost the same talk with regard to Gyumri these days, “What is going on in town?” However, it hasn’t started today, nor did it start yesterday; criminal face-offs in Gyumri have at least 15-year history. It is just that the mayor of Gyumri during that time was Vardan Ghukasyan who was the boss of one of the clans, and naturally, he concealed what could be concealed, criminal cases that could be “hushed up” were “hushed up.” Admittedly, as a result of that, crimes against his clan and against him personally, including the assassination attempt on him, were not investigated properly and were not solved.
Whenever Vardan Ghukasyan and his family would be blamed for having criminal inclinations, he would get extremely annoyed and say that those were made-up stories written by journalists at someone’s instruction, while he and his family were the embodiment of worship of God and the Cross. Once Mr. Ghukasyan responded to these criticisms with humor characteristic of a native of Gyumri: “I have only Spartak [the son, A.A.], and they [Martunik’s clan, A.A.] have an entire Spartakiad.” However, several tens of people from both parties are involved in criminal cases through a criminal chain linked by kinship and friendship. Therefore, it is a two-party “Spartakiad.”
Now Vardan Ghukasyan is not a mayor any longer. And it is important that the representative of Martunik’s clan confronting him is not the mayor either. It offers an opportunity to talk about the existing problem openly, without concealing. I.e. to acknowledge that those two teams are engaged in a bloody vendetta, which should be put an end to as soon as possible to avoid new victims. As well as, to raise the issue that those gangs have sponsors in the National Assembly and other government circles. It is more than obvious that the automatic rifle that killed a man on April 24 is not the only one in the rich arsenal at the disposal of the two clans. Furthermore, all oligarchs have such illegal armed groups in Armenia, and those are used not only in the inter-clan struggle, but also for political purposes (for example, on March 1). It is high time that everyone is disarmed.
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Aram Abrahamyan
