To my surprise, Eleonora Manandyan has just been interviewed on ArmNews. This was unexpected because she usually gets prevented from speaking about politics on TV. Instead, she is sometimes allowed to talk about her New Armenia organization but this evening she was talking about youth. In particular, she criticized the Baze Pan Armenian Youth Assembly which, like many other people, she considers to be part of a government policy to keep youth inactive and apathetic so as to prevent the emergence of a genuine student movement in Armenia.

Eleonora can be considered somewhat of a specialist on this because she was one of the leaders of the student youth movement in the Levon Ter Petrosian years. I’ve spoken for hours with her on many occasions and have always come away impressed. When I took New Internationalist magazine to interview her they made her one of the activists in the post-soviet world in their special “life after communism” issue. A truly fascinating woman who might run for the National Assembly in the 2007 parliamentary elections.

Anyway, she was on ArmNews to talk about youth in Armenia. The other invited guest was meant to be a representative of Baze. However, they didn’t show up. Not surprising really. Eleonora described the Baze youth movement as one especially formed before the 2003 presidential elections to keep youth passive and separated from the political process. They were specifically used in contravention of the electoral law and used state funds to campaign on behalf of Kocharian at the same time.

According to Eleonora, the purpose was to turn youth in Armenia into sheep. Probably, they succeeded and now it’s up to people like Eleonora to try to reverse the damage.

Recently we’ve been making contact with students. We have an idea to establish a youth club but until we do, students come here to become involved in some activities and to discuss various issues. They’re not passive, they’re the most active students, but they’re very immature when it comes to politics and even social activities. They are talking about things that we used to discuss when we were thirteen. All they do is watch Muz-Tv but what about literature? Okay, so they’re not interested in reading but as some of them are from the Faculty of Eastern Studies they should at least know something about Eastern or Arabic literature. However, they don’t know anything. Of course, they want to learn because they’re not bad people but even so, they’re more like thirteen year olds than adults.

For example, when the police brutally suppressed an opposition sit-in on Yerevan’s Baghramian Avenue on 12/13 April 2004, only twenty or so youth took part in a protest against the violation of human rights in Armenia held soon after. Still, if anyone can get youth active in the process of nation-building in Armenia, it’s her and it’s good to see that she’s on television talking quite openly about state control designed specifically to ensure that youth do not become an active political force in the country.

We will reverse this situation. In fact, I’m often asked what kind of issue can reactivate not only youth but also society itself and over the past two months I have begun to think more and more that it is education. We are now trying to initiate discussion in society not about educational programs or the law on education but rather its conception. I hope that this will be the area in which some change occurs. We are working with pupils in schools as well as their parents and I hope that this will change something. We have established pupil councils in 21 schools in the Arabkir district of Yerevan and we hope that these can serve as an example to other schools.

The quotes above are from an interview I conducted with Eleonora at the end of 2004. The interview is online here. Armenia Now recently also ran a story on Eleonora’s investigation into the abuse of state funds designated for supporting youth in Armenia.

“We decided to find out where the money goes, which the government in the form of a grant through a special decision had to allot to the youth, their issues and organizations that deal with those issues,” says Manandyan.

After two and a half months of trying to get information from the Ministry of Culture and Youth Issues, it took a threat of legal action to finally get answers.

“At the Ministry they were thinking that our eagerness would get weaker after constant delays and we would refuse our intention, but that couldn’t happen,” says Manandyan. “We were thinking that the situation wouldn’t be encouraging, but the results were so terrible that for several days we simply couldn’t believe it.”

The Armenia Now article can be read online here.

Photo: Youth Protest, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia, April 2004 © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia