On May 1 the head of the zoo of Yerevan announced the opening of the zoo and said that the cages and free-run cages of animals had been reconstructed. The difference of a cage and free-run cage is that lions, tigers are kept in a cage, but camels or goats are kept in free-run cages. As for the term ”free-run cage”, it does not make sense because if the animals are kept in a cage, even if they can run in a cage, still they are not free. During the past six years Zhirayr Sefilyan, former commander of a special army force of Shushi liberation and a hero who received the title ”War Cross”, has been refused to be given Armenian citizenship. Recently the mayor of Shushi Karen Avakimyan refused to give him honorary citizenship of Shushi. A group of intelligentsia representatives, non-governmental organizations and journalists sent a letter petitioning the mayor to give a citizenship to the hero, but this letter was refused.
We will not discuss the moral point of the issue because there is no morality; we will try to understand what it means to refuse someone to give citizenship of Armenia. It means to refuse to give concrete rights that the other citizens have too, refuse to give this opportunity to take honorable responsibilities.
What privileges do the Armenian citizens have? First, the future citizens of Armenia are born in Armenia notwithstanding anything and even the wish of the government. It is a success that the Constitution gives them the right for living immediately. Probably this is the only right that we can enjoy freely because in fact it is not against the interests of the government.
The Constitution and laws are intended for regulating the responsibilities and rights of people to enjoy the benfits of education, healthcare and social protection. In an elder stage people get the right to vote and be elected. One can understand whether people relate to elections and the right for vote seriously if he/she takes a closer look at the people who occupy key positions in the government. Indeed the laws give a lot of opportunities to the citizens of Armenia to fight for justice. In our society now people may refer to these laws, advocate for their rights and fight and even may be intimidated, thrown to prisons or even killed. People are theoretically for the use of these rights; they would like to benefit from these rights, but in fact they do not do anything for that purpose. It turns out that we have consciously narrowed the scope of our rights and we are happy to enjoy at least the first provision of the Constitution, which is the provision on the right to live. Not everyone does this. The relatives of the victims of March 1, the parents of the young man killed in the police department of Charentsavan and many other people can say it is the vice versa and they are deprived of the right to live too. It turns out that the Armenian citizenship in fact does not give any benefits. Neither it guarantees the vision of getting education in your mother language. There is information in the Internet that starting from September 1 the school after Pushkin will become a Russian collage. We wonder why Zhirayr Sefilyan wants to get Armenian citizenship and why the government decided to refuse.
It is very simple: the Armenian citizenship does not contain any benefits as far as you don’t want or you can’t benefit the privileges of an Armenian citizen, as far as we believe we are in a better situation as we are in a free-run cage while others are in cages (cells) and all we can still be citizens of Armenia, as far as we can take our children to the Russian collage after Pushkin and bypass the Armenian school and feel that we are citizens of Armenia.
Zhirayr Sefilyan and many other people, who do not have the ”opportunities’ provided by the Armenian citizenship better free citizens of Armenia as they can enjoy better opportunities. Sefilyan has a right which many Armenians don’t have; it is the right of self-expression without fright. In other words, he may dare feel freedom in case when the others don’t afford. That is why he is refused to be given a citizenship as he will demand the benefits of this right. By refusing to provide this right the authorities have refused to let him enjoy the human freedoms from the legal point of view. The refusal not to give honorary citizenship was the ”second dish” to make a psychological impact.
The Armenian citizenship is no more a benefit. In fact that status of an Armenian citizen is not a serious status; it is not supported by rights, dignity and demands a lot of responsibilities. In other words, by refusing to provide citizenship to Zhirayr Sefilyan and other people with such radical viewpoints, the government is multiplying the number of people who would like to voluntarily give up on their citizenship and get citizenship of another country.