The Tragedy Of The Women Of Armenia

[CheekY]

you might've already seen this...is it true? i mean people say there are lots of prostitutes in yerevan ...but in turkey??

 

The Tragedy of the Women of Armenia

 

By Avedis Yapujian

 

March 8 was International Women’s Day. In the past, sometimes, that was a day for rejoicing in Armenia. Fellows would give gifts to their sweethearts. Independence came, and President Levon Ter-Petrossian decided to abolish it, as a holiday left from the Soviet era. In reality, all the civilized countries of the world, including Australia, observe that day annually, even though they are not Soviet or Communist. Two years ago, Armenia’s National Assembly reestablished this holiday. However, the rejoicing of the old days is missing, it’s gone. Today, the women of Armenia are buried under a horrible tragedy.

 

I have said previously that independence created new words in the Armenian language. One of those new words is “marmnavajarutiun” (selling of one’s body) because we owe the creation of that sad word to an equally sad phenomenon which, perhaps involuntarily, created independence, and that word is the artfully made synonym of “bornugutiun” (prostitution). It’s a frightful word, which characterizes an equally frightful phenomenon, which the free-market economic policy brought with it. Today, Armenian women in Armenia are living a horrible tragedy, as government officials look on with indifference. Some people are of the opinion that it is possible to prevent it with proper sex education. However, sex education won’t satisfy the irresistible demand of the stomachs of those women, won’t furnish them bread, and won’t stop their pangs of hunger. Napoleon once said that “an army travels on its stomach.” A woman, in turn, keeps her morality by means of her stomach. While a hungry man steals, or commits a crime, an “easier” means is left to the woman to put an end to her hunger: selling her body. There was prostitution in Armenia during the Soviet era as well (is there any place where it doesn’t exist?); however, it had never become a common occurrence, the need had never been felt to create an artfully made word for it. Today, this activity has reached frightful proportions. The numbers given in the press cause bewilderment, and those who were present at a discussion which took place recently in the Journalists House in Yerevan agreed that it is impossible to eliminate this phenomenon. Today, in order to survive, our virgin girls willingly throw themselves into the arms of debauched Turks for the purpose of satisfying their bestial passion. Prostitution is supposedly outlawed in Armenia . . . You don’t know whether to laugh at, or cry over, that law. How can a law satisfy a hungry, unfed woman? Again, by law, how many individuals can be put in jail for that activity, considering that they number in the thousands?

 

A journalist from Armenia, named Anush Babayian, writes: “The oldest profession in the world is experiencing a revival in Armenia.” Is this the “revival” created by independence, while culture, the arts and literature have become buried in darkness? Anush Babayian gives frightening details: “The Armenian women who sell their bodies have a high ‘professional’ reputation in the United Arab Emirates (particularly Dubai) and Turkey; they have expanded their ‘activity’ in the United States, Germany. . . .”

 

The numbers released in the press are more dreadful. Accordingly, thirty thousand Armenian women in Istanbul are providing pleasure and delight to the offspring of genocidists. Five thousand others “are working” in Ankara and Adana. Their number in the United Arab Emirates surpasses twenty thousand. Of the European countries, they prefer Germany in particular, because there is a large Turkish community there. These women are wandering along the sidewalks of Marseille, Athens and Barcelona. As for Armenia, their number in Yerevan alone is more than a thousand, according to official statistics, but in reality it is triple that number. Many of these women have children. Fifty-two percent of them have sexually transmitted diseases, which they pass on to their male customers who, of course, get other women infected. Those who are ill and don’t have free medical treatment avoid going to clinics. Only some voluntarily turn themselves in to law-enforcement agencies so that they can get free medical treatment. As I write these facts, my heart feels as if it’s being crushed. I would have much preferred not to write about this. However, the problem won’t be solved, nor will the tragedy be stopped, by sticking our heads in the sand, like the proverbial ostrich. What’s more, according to the news reports, these women are divided into “classes,” according to age, and the “selling” takes place accordingly. They range in age from 15 to 40. A class of pimps has also been created. And what’s surprising is that, while prostitution is illegal, pimps operate legally. They seize their victims, sometimes demanding to be paid for the “favors” they do, sometimes by force, sometimes by being dazzled by the wealth which awaits them abroad. Foreign countries are where they “export” the prostitutes and “work” through their representatives, who take the women’s passports so the latter will remain “obedient” and, should they wish to return home, these representatives threaten to burn their passports. The journalist and film director Edik Bagdasarian has prepared a film called “Spider’s Web,” which shows the activity of “working” female prostitutes in various parts of Yerevan and reveals the social reasons giving rise to the selling of one’s body. And, given this situation, the Armenian authorities are babbling about a great future, when the present is so terrible that it leaves no hope for the future. For whom will that “great future” come, when the country is being emptied out through emigration, when the country is subjected to “brain drain” because of the departure of its scientists, artists and intellectuals, when our sisters and daughters are thrown into a hellish life, when our children are searching for food in the trash piles on the streets of Yerevan.

 

It’s as if, on top of all this, we needed this tragedy.

 

Sydney, Australia

 

This article, which originally appeared in Miutiun monthly of Sydney, was reprinted in the April 6, 2002 issue of Nor Or weekly and translated into English by TAR Int’l managing editor Aris G. Sevag.

[CheekY]

again old news but i didn't really know lol

 

Poverty Casts Long Shadows for Armenia's Sex Workers

By Onnik Krikorian

 

International Seminar on Strategising to Combat Trafficking in Women and Children, 15-16 February, Dhaka, Bangladesh

 

The implosion of the Soviet Union has meant poverty for millions of people. From Belarus to Kazakhstan, women in particular have been touched by unemployment and have had to resort to selling their bodies to make ends meet. Gemini News Service reports from Armenia, where thousands of women have turned to prostitution and some have been sold abroad into a life of slavery.

 

 

YEREVAN, Armenia -- Armine is twenty-two years old. A recent University graduate, she speaks Armenian, Russian and French. She has long black hair, expressive eyes, and a warm smile. Like other girls her age, she dresses stylishly.

 

She speaks openly about her life. Her father was killed during the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Artsax. Her mother is critically ill and requires medical treatment.

 

Armine has to provide for herself and for her mother.

 

Under normal circumstances, Armine would cost $40 for two hours, but a local bar owner has brought her to my table as a ‘gift’ in an otherwise seemingly ‘normal’ bar on Mashtots Avenue in Yerevan, the capital of the newly independent republic.

 

Through a pair of curtains on one side of the bar, a sauna, a pool and a bedroom. This is usually where Armine receives her clients. Remarks to the barman that Armine's situation is sad are answered with a shrug. “It is life.”

 

The brief encounter underlines how human beings have become commodities in a country experiencing a difficult transition from Communism to a market economy.

 

In Armenia, one of the poorest countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the loose confederation that replaced the Soviet Union, over 50 per cent of the population live below the poverty line and over 30 per cent of the workforce is unemployed, according to recent World Bank statistics.

 

Unemployment figures double when it comes to the female population. And poverty is increasingly taking a female face with women like Armine having to fend alone for survival in a highly patriarchal society.

 

“Women have been abandoned by their husbands,” says Katica Cekalovic, the former Residential Representative of the United Nations who finished her tenure in Armenia last June. “I use the word "abandoned" because husbands left Armenia with the idea of finding work in Russia, and at the beginning were sending money home. Now they no longer send anything back and many women are now the head of their families and have to look after their children somehow.”

 

Armine’s situation is therefore far from being unique. Hundreds of thousands of women like her have become commercial sex workers in order to get by. In Moscow alone, recent statistics from the local authorities estimate that more than 120,000 women work the streets of the capital. Most of them come from other parts of the former Soviet Union.

 

A report published at the end of last year by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), notes that international organizations still know very little about the size of the sex industry in transitional countries and even less about the same phenomenon when it is taken abroad.

 

According to the United Nations, between one and two million women and children are trafficked around the world each year, and citizens of the ex-Soviet republics make up a sizable proportion of this sad trade.

 

Conservative estimates suggest that from a population of less than four million in 1989, between 800,000 and one million Armenians have emigrated since independence was declared in 1991.

 

As many countries have imposed tighter controls on immigration, criminal networks have emerged to offer asylum seekers and economic refugees false documents and illegal entry into other countries. Women have become their prime target.

 

Recent studies indicate that while many women and young girls are being lured into commercial sex work as a direct consequence of poverty in Armenia, others are deceived and effectively sold into a life of slavery.

 

While 17 of the 59 women interviewed for the OSCE report suspected that they would be sent abroad to work in the sex industry, the remainder did not.

 

Instead, advertisements in newspapers and recruitment from apparently ‘legitimate’ tourist and employment agencies in Yerevan convinced many of those sent to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that they would be employed as singers, dancers, models, waitresses, cleaners and nannies.

 

After arriving at their destination however, their passports were taken from them before they were forced to service as many as 30-40 clients a day. In some cases, most of their income was taken by pimps who often resorted to violence.

 

Officials at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport are also alleged to demand bribes after threatening to release the girls’ photographs to the newspapers after their return to Armenia.

 

Although at the time of the report, Armenia had not become a signatory to UN protocols and codes relating to transnational organized crime, trafficking, and migrant smuggling, its laws include provisions that give the authorities the power to detain and prosecute individuals involved in the sex industry and in international trafficking from Armenia.

 

But so far it seems that those involve in the illicit business - often run openly through tourism and employment agencies - have avoided prosecution by maintaining the right contacts.

 

Reports from the United Nations also indicate that an increase in prostitution and trafficking goes hand-in-hand with the overnight development of strip clubs, bars, saunas, restaurants and hotels which in addition to accommodating legitimate customers, also serve as the environment in which prostitutes meet and service their clients.

 

“I was working as a waitress in a cafe,” says one anonymous Armenian woman in the report. “When the café closed one of the customers saw me in the street and said she was going to Dubai and that there was a lot of work in cafes, bars and restaurants there”.

 

“She paid the ticket for me and gave me $200 to leave to my family. She took me to the hairdresser and dentist and even bought me a dress. She said that I needed to look good in order to get a high salary and paid the officials at the passport office to get new passports for us because one girl was seventeen.”

 

“At the airport everybody knew her, including the police, customs and border guards, and when we arrived in Dubai, she explained to us that we had been sold to an Arab man and that he could do whatever he wanted with us. From that day on, my misery started. He was sending around 50 clients a day, sometimes even more”, she recalls.

 

Such cases are not isolated and the report also notes that organised criminals are now increasingly recruiting young girls in Armenian orphanages.

 

The OSCE report states that underage girls from Armenia can attract as much as $40,000 for one month’s work in the United Arab Emirates. They are seen as a safe alternative in the face of the fast-growing HIV epidemic.

 

Although Armenia experienced an impressive nine per cent economic growth last year, the World Bank was quick to describe this apparent development as an “economic paradox,” raising serious concerns with the increasing polarisation of Armenian society and the growth of the shadow economy.

 

Most experts involved in tackling the problem of international trafficking agree that until unemployment is reduced and salaries raised, it is likely that emigration and human trafficking from Armenia will continue to take place, casting shadows over Armine’s generation.- GEMINI NEWS

[gurgen]

I guess those who left Armenia are now reminded once again why....

 

It's going the wrong way..

[Nvard]

I will not judge anyone.

But as for me it's sad, horrible, disgusting to realize our nation has to face this

I agree, that there're other ways to make money, even for women, and even in todays Armenia

 

I always think that our nation had hardships even worse than todays economic situatuon.But still women could somehow live through that.

[-=VAHE=-]

Damn this really makes me sad as it does to all of you and the problem is we really can't do anything about it and the stupid Government for sure won't.