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  • This Side of Bars

    THIS SIDE OF BARS

    Lragir.am
    09 June 06

    There is not a single government agency or office which attends to the
    social problems of former inmates, therefore former prisoners have set
    up This Side of Bars NGO. The chair of this organization Gevorg
    Koshkaryan met news reporters June 9.

    Film director Armen Mazmanyan was with Mr. Koshkaryan. The chair of
    the NGO said their key purpose is to create jobs for former prisoners,
    help them find jobs and earn a living. And creative people understand
    their problems more quickly and deeply. It turned out that the NGO had
    achieved a lot, and all thanks to good will of some people and
    willingness to share their problems. It also became known that
    fortunately not only Armen Mazmanyan is such. Sos Sargsyan helps
    them. Nadezhda Sargsyan admits children of former prisonersto her
    school free of charge. There are other benefactors too, and there is
    a small production unit under the NGO, they publish a newspaper
    entitled Return and discuss their problems. The newspaper is free of
    charge. About 50 former prisoners were accommodated in a
    dormitory. There were marriages too. But the road to the dormitory is
    in a hopeless state. `If we get the materials,we have good masters and
    we can do it ourselves,' states Gevorg Koshkaryan.

    Armen Mazmanyan says it is necessary to help these people to integrate
    with the society. `These are people who made a mistake and served
    theirsentence. Integration should be a strategic government
    policy. By rejecting these people and labeling them as convicts we
    make them repeat their mistake. And failure of integration is a bomb
    behind our backs, which is going to go off one day.

    'And Gevorg Koshkaryan believes that the members of their organization
    will not commit another crime.
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