My door is always open, says refugee in Armenia
Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Date: 01 Sep 2005
By Rosa Minasyan
UNHCR Armenia
YEREVAN, Armenia (UNHCR) – Destiny has come full circle and brought Sergey Danielyan back to his origins, to his ancestors' land where his life started.
Danielyan was born in 1936 in eastern Armenia. As a young man, he joined his brother in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, where he worked as a driver and started a family.
In 1989 and 1990, tensions between the two countries over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh erupted into massacres of Armenians in Azerbaijan's Sumgait and Baku. As ethnic Armenians, Danielyan and his family had to flee. But he wanted to go to Armenia while his wife decided to join her family in Brest, Belarus, taking their two daughters with her.
[...]
[...]. The Armenian Department for Migration and Refugees gave him shelter until he moved to his grandfather's old house in Shinuayr village, not far from Goris city in eastern Armenia.
[...]
At 69, Danielyan is cheerful and agile. He can easily climb trees, and walk to the upper village and look after his brother's garden. The earth there is stony and he has to carry the soil in a bucket. But he says it is not hard for him to do all this work alone. He is already used to it and feels satisfied with his way of life.
Although he lives alone – his daughters are working as a teacher in Belarus and a lawyer in the United States – he seems happy living with nature. Everything he needs is grown in the garden and he gives corn and cherries freely to everybody. "Let them take!" he booms, gesturing around the garden.
[...]
There's an Armenian saying that people living in harmony with nature become wise men. Danielyan is a living example of this. Despite his remote location, he is fully informed on current affairs around the world. He rattles off facts on the number of Russians living below the poverty level, on Russia's military pullout from Georgia, on the Baku-Jeyhan oil pipe line, and on relations between the government and opposition in Armenia.
[...]
"I am a person with a sincere heart and the doors of my house are always open to everybody," he says of his life credo.
Ethnic Armenians from Azerbaijan like Danielyan form the biggest group of refugees in Armenia today, numbering more than 230,000.
UNHCR opened its office in Armenia in 1992 to help the government meet the needs of more than 360,000 ethnic Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan who fled because of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The refugee agency and its partners have worked to provide humanitarian assistance for refugees, and permanent shelter for those living in temporary dwellings.
[...]
UNHCR continues to provide legal assistance to those refugees in need of protection, and produces bulletins and TV programmes to raise public awareness on refugee issues in the country.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Date: 01 Sep 2005
By Rosa Minasyan
UNHCR Armenia
YEREVAN, Armenia (UNHCR) – Destiny has come full circle and brought Sergey Danielyan back to his origins, to his ancestors' land where his life started.
Danielyan was born in 1936 in eastern Armenia. As a young man, he joined his brother in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, where he worked as a driver and started a family.
In 1989 and 1990, tensions between the two countries over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh erupted into massacres of Armenians in Azerbaijan's Sumgait and Baku. As ethnic Armenians, Danielyan and his family had to flee. But he wanted to go to Armenia while his wife decided to join her family in Brest, Belarus, taking their two daughters with her.
[...]
[...]. The Armenian Department for Migration and Refugees gave him shelter until he moved to his grandfather's old house in Shinuayr village, not far from Goris city in eastern Armenia.
[...]
At 69, Danielyan is cheerful and agile. He can easily climb trees, and walk to the upper village and look after his brother's garden. The earth there is stony and he has to carry the soil in a bucket. But he says it is not hard for him to do all this work alone. He is already used to it and feels satisfied with his way of life.
Although he lives alone – his daughters are working as a teacher in Belarus and a lawyer in the United States – he seems happy living with nature. Everything he needs is grown in the garden and he gives corn and cherries freely to everybody. "Let them take!" he booms, gesturing around the garden.
[...]
There's an Armenian saying that people living in harmony with nature become wise men. Danielyan is a living example of this. Despite his remote location, he is fully informed on current affairs around the world. He rattles off facts on the number of Russians living below the poverty level, on Russia's military pullout from Georgia, on the Baku-Jeyhan oil pipe line, and on relations between the government and opposition in Armenia.
[...]
"I am a person with a sincere heart and the doors of my house are always open to everybody," he says of his life credo.
Ethnic Armenians from Azerbaijan like Danielyan form the biggest group of refugees in Armenia today, numbering more than 230,000.
UNHCR opened its office in Armenia in 1992 to help the government meet the needs of more than 360,000 ethnic Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan who fled because of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The refugee agency and its partners have worked to provide humanitarian assistance for refugees, and permanent shelter for those living in temporary dwellings.
[...]
UNHCR continues to provide legal assistance to those refugees in need of protection, and produces bulletins and TV programmes to raise public awareness on refugee issues in the country.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 5:48 AM
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