Twenthy-eight-year-old Varduhi Baghdasaryan says almost voicelessly that she does not want to talk about anything related to her husband. She is the widow of Grigor Gevorgyan who became a chance victim of March 1 events.

“I apologize a thousand times, but I have no wish to talk about it. It has happened for about three times – I talked to reporters, my words were twisted and printed, and that’s why I don’t want it. Once again, I am sorry, but I don’t want to,” says Grigor’s wife and closes the door of the small one-room house in Kond, where she has been living with her two children and without her husband for a year.

On the morning of March 1, 2008, Tigran Khachatryan woke up in high mood – it was spring.

“He entered the kitchen and said: “Mom, happy first spring day!” He knew that I love spring,” tells Alla Hovhannisyan, mother of the 23-year-old who became a victim of March 1 tragedy.

Sunday’s first day of spring will have a very different meaning for the Khachatryan family.

As tragic and disturbing as were the violence and deaths from March 1, 2008 for Armenia, the implications from the day are much deeper and more profound.

Specifically, the implications on Armenia from March 1st are two-fold. First, March 1st revealed that the political reality in the country has changed, irrevocably. Second, it also exposed the government as much less popular and more distrusted than ever before.

Beef, cut into pieces and boiled. Potatoes, boiled and cut into pieces. This is Melissa Brown’s Wednesday.

“People in jail are not allowed any other food,” Brown explains, preparing her weekly visit to her husband. He’s a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, but Alexander Arzumanyan is more recently one of the “Case of 7” – jailed on charges of trying to overthrow the government last March 1.

“It’s like I’m getting ready for a birthday party each time. When I know that besides my husband, the four other guys who are in prison with him are going to eat what I’ve cooked, I think I should make it tasty, but one is not allowed to take tasty things to prison,” the wife says.

Last March 1 defined Armenia’s future, yet unfolding. Recollections and reflections are the focus of this one-year anniversary.

The day brought power to some while crippling the aspirations of others. And while a nation convulsed from the poisonous ambitions of a few and the unrewarded loyalty of thousands, 10 families were shredded.

Ten Armenians were killed by Armenians in the capital of Armenia, for reasons that served no good. Some were oppositionists. Some supported the government. Some had no political bias.

These victims did not earn martyrdom. There were no Hrant Dinks or Gurgen Markaryans among them. No State honors. Only a nation disgraced.

The deaths were marked less by bravery than by ill fate. They were as common as your father or brother or son, and died absurd deaths. They should not be deified. But neither should they be forgotten.

Tigran Abgaryan
Armen Farmanyan
Grigor Gevorgyan
Samvel Harutyunyan
Hovhaness Hovhannisyan
Zackar Hovhannisyan
Tigran Khachatryan
Gor Kloyan
David Petrosyan
Hamlet Tadevosyan

The tenth victim of bloody March 1 was 29-year-old Samvel Harutyunyan, who lived in the village of Yeghegnavan village, Ararat Province, where a year later his parents cannot come to grips with the reality of what happened.

Through her grief Samvel’s mother, Zarik, recalls events . . .

“That day he left the house at about 5:30 p.m. He went to buy baby food for his six-month-old daughter. While leaving he said he would be back in an hour. He went and never came back,” says the mother. (Family members suppose that since he found himself in Yerevan he just decided to see what was going on.)

Four year-old Sarkis often wakes with the same unanswerable question: “Hasn’t Dad come back? I want Gor…”

Gor Kloyan didn’t come back home to his two sons March 1 after he went to the center of Yerevan out of curiosity over what he’d been hearing. Gor, 28, was one of 10 who died from Armenia’s dark First Day of Spring.

“I don’t know what to say to this child, how to explain to him that his father is not coming back anymore, that some people retained their power at the cost of his father’s blood and other 9 innocent victims’ blood,” says Sarkis’ grandmother Azatuhi Manukyan.

Today few people remember the date of the last presidential election in Armenia. February 19 has been lost in the void of March 1.

Of course, everybody has his or her own way of remembering and analyzing what happened. From the very beginning conflicting opinions were expressed concerning the nature of the events, but today, when a whole year has passed, all these opinions sound equally fresh and emotional. Some people still think that it was a failed foreign attempt to make a “color revolution” in the country; some view the events as a domestic case (attempts of avenging circles to usurp power); some others view them against the background of the general dissatisfaction of the masses concerning the situation in the country.

(New York) - Armenia has yet to hold the police accountable for their excessive use of force a year after a day of clashes with protesters that led to at least 10 deaths, Human Rights Watch said in a comprehensive report today.

The 64-page report, "Democracy on Rocky Ground: Armenia's Disputed 2008 Presidential Election, Post-Election Violence, and the One-Sided Pursuit of Accountability," details the clashes between police and protesters in Armenia's capital, Yerevan, on March 1, 2008, in the wake of the disputed February 2008 presidential polls.

The are no more words for the grief, so a year after the worst day of their lives Rosa Haroutyunyan and her husband Edik Abgaryan just sit in silence and the vacuum their lives have become after losing their son Tigran in the madness of last March 1.

“My husband and I stopped talking to each other, we sit down like this, the grandma with us, we do not utter a single world, we cannot bear it, and again we fall into silence,” says Rosa. When she does speak the sentences are halted by weeping.

They try to find what they lost in this deep silence – their boy’s smile, his speech, laughing. He was 19.