Interview with Sedrak Baghdasaryan, Chairman of the Victims of State Needs NGO

The Victims of State Needs NGO was established to protect citizens' property rights. The organization was established by former residents of Buzand street who became victims of "prevailing public interests".

What were the shortcomings of the process of forced alienation of property that started in 2000?

I would divide the issue into two parts. The process that happened in 2000-2006 was simply plunder of citizens on a state level, nothing else, since citizens' property rights guaranteed by the Constitution were violated. Norms of international agreements ratified by Armenia were violated, in particular, Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Decision 92 adopted by the RA Constitutional Court in 1998.         

The second stage starts at the end of 2006 when the Law on the Alienation of Property for Public and State Needs was adopted that is effective until today. The law allowed the Government to implement certain urban development projects under the name of "prevailing public interests" which too implied alienation of citizens' property. During the implementation the land was unfortunately not bought but stolen from the owners. We have studied the case: using the state criteria of property assessment, the developers made $25,000-30,000 pure profit (with all expenses deducted) from each square meter at the Northern and Central Avenues.

According to the law, there should be compensation for the property to be alienated - market price plus 15% premium. At first sight, the proposed condition is not bad, what is the problem?   

The question is how the assessment is done. In reality, the assessing agency assesses the property at 50% of the market price, and even when the premium is added it is still less than the real market price. 

The problem is that the developer orders and pays the assessing agency. Actually "Artin Enterprises" was the monopolist here and conclusions of other assessing agencies were not accepted. Besides, no assessing agency wanted to deal with prevailing public interest since there were cases when The State Committee of the Real Estate Cadastre deprived agencies of their licenses for assessing citizens' property at high prices.    

Thus, we have the following picture: the Government is the ringleader of the construction, it is implemented by developers, assessment is done by organizations licensed by the Government.

The version with apartment compensation is more advantageous for the developers because when you count even the trifling compensation that they assess, it makes a huge sum. But they choose fraud. They intimidate citizens that if they do not agree it will be worse, they will share the destiny of the Buzand street residents.     

What shortcomings do you see in the Law on Alienation of Property for Public and State Needs?

The law definitely does not completely guarantee citizens' rights. Today the State does not have the funds to do the development itself so it allows the rich and businesses to do it. It is possible to understand and accept it but in any case the Government has to manage the process protecting interests of proprietors. The State itself has to alienate the property of citizens and then give it to the developers since developers have only one interest - to pay less and to sell expensive making big profits. And the Government does not protect interests of citizens, instead it sends them to courts. I can tell just one thing about the way our court works: since 2000 no proprietor has won the case in the court while the European Court of Human Rights has made decisions that The Republic of Armenia had violated property rights.    

The law has to be more precise guaranteeing and protecting rights of citizens. For instance, the law does not define how the developer's price offer is calculated, if the the proprietor can apply to another assessing agency if he does not agree with the offered price etc. Now the citizen applies to the municipality, they tell him to go to the developers. Why should I run after the developer begging him to pay a little more? It is humiliating.

Imagine that someone has a house where he lives. It is good or bad, that's a different question, it provides him a shelter. The house may really be very cheap but he does not want to sell it because he cannot buy a new house with that money. If they give him a one-room apartment even in the suburbs, there will be no problem. Thousands of apartments have been constructed in Yerevan. Has anyone received an apartment for his house? If this is really "prevailing public interest", whose interest is it?      

However, citizens too have to be blamed. They have to study the law, read and apply to attorneys, experts to be able to protect themselves even with the minimum rights stipulated by laws.    

Some proprietors after gaining no success in local courts apply to European Court of Human Rights. What are the expectations from the European Court?

There are more than 30 cases in the European Court today. There are two decisions where the European Court has stated that the Republic of Armenia had violated rights of the proprietor in one case and those of the user in another. Other decisions are pending.

In all these cases our state is going to lose and compensation will be paid from the state budget. Is our state so rich?  Had the local courts protected our rights, developers would have paid the compensation. But today the Government and businesses are coalesced, they misappropriate the money and do not care about the budget.

You as well as some residents from the development areas have no property and no registration. What problems does it cause for you?    

In 2007 when we went to take part in the National Assembly elections we found out that we were not in the election lists. And those who had signed contracts and according to the law had to be checked out from the registration, were still in the lists - some 400 people. 

We - 37 citizens that did not sign contracts, mainly residents of Buzand street, were not allowed to participate in presidential and municipality elections. I have raised this question before different embassies and representatives of international organizations.

Today sone of my neighbors cannot retire on a pension because he has no registration. They would not give military registration to my son since he had no passport. My neighbor's daughter could not register her marriage; there are many such cases.   

Our passports still have our old addresses but we are not at the police databases. I was told that the head of the Project implementation office wrote a letter that certain addresses had been developed and people were automatically checked out from those addresses. Now we are homeless.

Interview by Mary Alexanyan

Source: www.hra.am

The page of "Victims of State Needs" NGO in the addressbook of www.hra.am website