Chinari (village)

Located on the right bank of the Khndzorut River, about 800 m above sea level.

The climate is subtropical, the average annual temperature is about 26 ° C, with mild winters (about 0 ° C) and with warm summers +26 ° C. The population is about 1,000 people, and in recent years it has been significantly reduced due to migration to the Russian Federation . In 2009, in the Berda area, under the Millennium Challenge program, road construction works will be carried out, within the framework of which the bridge of the Chinari village will be repaired. ^[3] In the village is located the monastery of Horanashat (XIII century.). ^[four]

Yerkir Union completed the implementation of a program to create a computer class in a school in the village of Chinari in the Tavush region . In 2005, the beautification of the village school was carried out ^[5] . A program is underway to reconstruct the kindergarten and music school in the village. A program has been launched to restore a centralized heating network and provide new furniture for kindergarten. After getting acquainted with the problems of the village, an agreement was reached to implement a program in the village to buy empty houses with their subsequent provision to young families who do not have separate housing. ^[6]

On June 18, 2008, two residents of the village of Chinari were killed by sniper shots during field work. Azerbaijani border guards from a post at a dominant height opened deliberate fire on the villager Rafik Sogoyan (1958), who performed agricultural work in the field, as a result of which the latter died on the spot. Another resident of the village who was killed is 21-year-old Levon Petrosyan. After some time, the director of the village school was injured. Another young man in Chinari received damage to his face with a stone fragment that ricocheted from an Azerbaijani sniper shot. The man was going to the hairdresser. The villagers actually live under the gun, and as the official Arkady Karakhanyan says, Chinari is two stops from hell. Violations of the ceasefire regime occur, including on the eve of, and even during monitoring. The shelling of the village is especially intensified in the morning, when children go to school, and in the evening, when people return home. In 2008, the number of shelling of border villages sharply increased. If in 2007 9 cases were recorded, then in 2008, 60 shelling of border villages. The Armenian side and the OSCE have repeatedly proposed monitoring in the direction of Chinari, but the Azerbaijani side stubbornly refuses, even disrupting the planned activities. The village of Chinari is, it can be said, in the most deplorable state, it is fired at from three sides by Azerbaijani posts located at dominant heights. As a result of the actions of snipers in broad daylight, civilians are dying. Due to constant shelling, the local population is forced to use bypass roads. For this reason, the Chinari-Movsesgyuh road is not used. Representatives of border military units inform about daily cases of ceasefire violations by Azerbaijani posts. The shelling is carried out daily, and they shoot not only in the direction of positions, but also transport, including civilian. In turn, the field assistants of the personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in- Office promised to convey to the Ambassador Kasprzyk the information voiced at the meeting and the desire of the Armenian side to achieve monitoring in the direction of Chinari village. Statements by the Azerbaijani side about the “impossibility” to give security guarantees for monitoring are a way to “culturally” fail the event. The Azerbaijani side has twice canceled the already planned ones for this reason and continues to refuse to organize OSCE monitoring in the direction of the village of Chinari, Tavush region of Armenia . ^{[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]}

The Armenian government is taking steps to ensure that its citizens, who became “internally displaced persons” after their home villages were bombed by the Azerbaijani side during the 1992–94 conflict, were able to return to their homes. But without security guarantees, the assistance offered by the government will prove futile. According to the plans of the authorities, residents of villages, such as the village of Chinari, adjacent to the border, will receive $ 7,700 each for the restoration of their destroyed houses, as well as money for the purchase of tools, transportation and other expenses. The authorities believe that this program, whose total cost is almost $ 40 million, will be an incentive for people to return to their homes, and life will return to these villages, now half-empty. Everything would be fine, only no guarantees are given to potential returnees that this life will be safe. While the conflicting parties are trying to come to an agreement, the village of Chinari is regularly bombarded. Its residents today doubt that the money offered by the government will encourage their “displaced” neighbors to return home.

Fourteen years have passed since the ceasefire was signed, putting an end to the armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh , and relations between Yerevan and Baku are still cold. Only a small valley separates Chinari from the positions of the Azerbaijani army, through the sights of the guns of which ninety percent of the land of the village is visible. Last June, a young man died from a sniper bullet in Chinari, after which three families left the village. Local officials claim that over the past six weeks, the village has been bombarded with large-caliber weapons thirty times.

Although there are 170 students in the school where she teaches, only half-olds live in half of the inhabited houses in Chinari. Many young families left the village in search of a safer life, and, as the head of the village administration Samvel Sagoyan says , it is unlikely that they will be able to return them back only by promising money. People understand that Chinari is not a place where you can calmly raise children, because even a rural kindergarten is observed from Azerbaijani positions.

The same opinion can be heard in other villages in the north-east of Armenia . Just like in Chinari, in the village of Nerkin Karmirahbyur , located about 700 meters from the border, many destroyed houses are the result of shelling. ^[13]

• Choranashat Monastery in Chinari

• Geonames profile (link not available )
• World Gazetteer