Several weeks ago our newspaper wrote about Artavazd Tadevosyan’s family as a needy family. They are from Garni village community. Yesterday we visited this family with a citizen to help them with their needs, they showed us one of their 7 children named Ilona (10 years old) and said, “Do you know who she is?” Those who have participated in the February 19 demonstrations in the Liberty square may recognize the child in this picture. The child’s father, Artavazd Tadevosyan, talked to us and said that he had been at the rally place on the February 31-March 1 night with his daughter. At that night Ilona was sleeping in a tent near the Opera House. Later it turned out that the rumors spread by people that a 12 years old child had been killed concerned their daughter. Concerning this Tadevosyan has told us the following: “I have attended all the rallies organized by Levon Ter-Petrosyan. During the past days I stayed there with my children. On February 31 I was there with my daughter Ilona. A lot of people may recognize her because during those days she was dancing there on the scene. Many of the participants know my daughter. That night we were in a tent and my kid had taken off her shoes and covered her legs with a blanket. When the police came everyone started yelling and there was a confusion and chaos there. I was frightened and took my daughter on my hands and ran away. She hadn’t put the shoes on and we had left her shoes in the Opera House square. The demonstrators who knew my daughter saw that my daughter was barefooted and thought that the police had killed her. They found the shoes but the girl was not there. We were already at home after seven o’clock. I went back at 3 p.m. and saw two women, who were crying and saying that a child had died. I said that the shoes they had found belonged to my daughter and that I had taken my daughter home. Later I went back home and took my child back to show them that she was alive. Then they stopped crying. Later, at about 7 p.m. I went to meet the rally participants and I saw that they had made a fire place with candles on it; they were commemorating my child. Even there was a bishop there and they were praying. Later when they took the garbage and the tents from the square and brought to the place nearby the French Embassy, the child’s shoes were there with the garbage. People were talking and saying that the shoes belonged to the girl who had danced in the square and the girl was not with them any more. I approached them and said that she was my daughter and she had not died, I told them that I had taken her home but left the shoes in the square. I wanted to refute that rumor as it was not true and they were commemorating a child who was alive. When I said that, they threw the fireplace, the flowers and the candles away. When I said that they came down and stopped crying.” By the way, Ilona is not 12, but 10 years old, and that day she had black shoes.
