Loggers and Fishermen Must Accept That Armenia is a State, Expert Says

Expert on Turkish-Kurdish conflicts Karen Hovhannisyan wrote on his Facebook page: “If there are people who are rubbing their hands in joy after the Ijevan incidents, then they are traitors to the homeland. It is difficult to cut loggers and fishermen off from a source of income that has a history not just of one year, but of decades. However, both loggers and fishermen must accept that Armenia is a state, and they are citizens of that state. Citizens who have obligations… I have said and will repeat, the Soviet Union taught us very bad things – theft, how to steal, but also how to receive salaries, how to get houses… If we are complaining today that the state is trying to preserve even the little that has been preserved, then we truly have a problem with the citizen-versus-nomad term. Generally, nomads destroy everything in their wake, since it is unlikely they will return there…

Well, what should the logger and fisherman do? The logger can rent land from the state, plant trees, and sell those trees as building material at a much higher price after three or four years, without any headaches…

And what about the fisherman? Gegharkunik has all the wonderful conditions for people to engage in fish production and sell their products… In short, children should not be involved in the game; social issues should not be turned into a game when it comes to the preservation of the homeland’s nature. And if there is a redistribution of business, a redistribution of the boundaries of influence, that is already from an entirely different genre, but I consider that genre to be quite unlikely.”