“Our lives are threatened every minute”
Five-year-old Areg, who attends a kindergarten in frontier Chinari village, knows where he should run to ‘find shelter' with the other 29 children if Azerbaijanis start shelling the village.
The director of the kindergarten shows the mountain from where Azerbaijanis target at the village, keeping the 30 children of the kindergarten at gunpoint.
"Our lives are threatened every minute," says the director.
The local authorities say they have no time for heroic deeds. The head of the village Samvel Soghoyan says they are doing everything to keep the enemy ignorant of their problems.
"In all cases, we must show the enemy that the shelling has not harmed us because they might get more obscene," he said.
Mr Soghoyan says Azerbaijanis get more aggressive during the spring sowing and when the villagers harvest wheat and grape.
"Sometimes, we reap the fields and harvest the crop at night," said the village head.
Chinari is officially said to have 1200 residents. The locals say the figure is far from the reality. About 600 people have left the village in recent years. The vast majority of the inhabitants are elderly people. Israel Vanyan, 73, lives in the village with his wife. Their five sons live and work in the Russian capital.
The elderly people say they have got used to the enemy's hours-long fire attack.
P.S.
The article was written within the framework of a visit to the frontier villages organized by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). On March 24-26, a group of journalists visited Tavush marz to cover the problems of frontier villages.
