Georgia
IHF FOCUS: elections; freedom of expression and the media; torture,
ill-treatment and police misconduct; freedom of religion; asylum seekers.
In
November 2003, the 12-year-long regime of Eduard Shevardnadze, often criticized
as undemocratic, was ended by the “Rose Revolution,” as the change of power was
called by leaders of the mass demonstration that led to his ousting.
Shevardnadze, a former soviet politburo member and KGB general, had come to
power through a coup d’etat in 1992.
His regime was marked with ethnic conflicts, a civil war, mass human rights
violations, the suppression of political opponents, high rates of criminality
and corruption and widespread poverty.
Hope
for the future democratic development of Georgia combined with hope to overcome
the old regime’s legacy were strong given the peaceful end of Shevardnadze’s
era, the strong international support for the new government and the
well-developed civil society institutions in the country.
On
22 November, following weeks of protests demanding Shevardnadze’s resignation,
Mikheil Saakashvili, Shevardnadze’s former protégé and the leader of the
opposition National Movement, led a group of protestors into the parliament
while security forces escorted Shevardnadze out of the building. Opposition
loyalists announced that they no longer recognized President Shevardnadze’s
authority. Shevardnadze denounced the action as an attempted coup.
The opposition’s
takeover of parliament pre-empted an attempt by Shevardnadze to convene the
largely pro-president legislature on the basis of the official 2 November
parliamentary election results, which had been rigged. An independent parallel
vote count indicated that the opposition National Movement had received most
votes, and that the opposition parties had outperformed pro-government forces
by a significant margin.
While
Nino Burjanadze, an opposition leader and speaker of the outgoing parliament,
assumed presidential authority pending new elections, Shevardnadze sought to
rally the army and interior ministry troops to his side. He announced a state
of emergency on state television, and indicated that defense and interior
ministry forces could be used to restore order. A large percentage of those
forces, however, were already on Mikheil Saakashvili’s side. Saakashvili
refused to negotiate with Shevardnadze.
Eduard Shevardnadze announced his resignation on 23 November.
Georgian
NGOs played an important role in developments following the November elections
and in Eduard Shevardnadze’s peaceful departure. Two Georgian NGOs in particular, the Liberty
Institute and the student-led association Kmara, led aggressive
get-out-the-vote efforts before the 2 November elections and used their
organizations to keep protests steady and visible afterwards. Shevardnadze
criticized them for siding with Saakashvili and the rest of the opposition. He
particularly criticized the Open Society–Georgia Foundation and philanthropist
George Soros for allegedly helping to foment the anti-government protests.
On
4 January 2004,
new presidential elections were held, with Saakashvili winning with an
overwhelming majority. Officially, the voter turnout amounted to 83%, of whom
96% voted for Saakashvili.
Soon
after taking office, President Mikheil Saakashvili declared measures for the
implementation of far-reaching political and economic reforms in Georgia.
The fast pace of these triggered criticism that he was embracing
anti-democratic methods in order to promote democracy. These measures included
constitutional changes that allegedly enhanced executive authority at the
expense of the legislative and judicial branches of government.
The human rights record of Adjara, an
autonomous republic headed by Aslan Abashidze since 1991, remained poor.
Reports were received, particularly about violations of freedom of the press
and freedom of association. Since the change of power, tensions rose between
the central government and the Adjaran authorities, and at times escalation
towards armed conflict threatened. The Adjaran authorities detained and
harassed political activists aligned with the central government who had
campaigned against the local government. Beatings, detentions and harassment of
those critical of Abashidze and his government continued. The Adjaran
authorities continued to refuse to release Tengiz Asanidze, a political
prisoner pardoned in 1999 by then-President Shevardnadze. At
the end of January 2004, in a positive move however, the Ajdaran government
permitted the Rustavi-2 television station to broadcast again after a
long-standing ban. Rustavi-2 was renowned for its support of the “Rose
Revolution.”
Elections
Elections
were held on 2 November to elect a new parliament under President Shevardnadze
until the expiration of his mandate in April 2005. Despite a new Unified
Electoral Code and several attempts during the first half of the year by
international organizations, notably the OSCE/ODIHR and US envoys, to ensure a
democratic process, the elections fell short of a large number of
internationally accepted standards for democratic elections.
In
July, following the failure of parliamentarians to agree on the composition of
the new Central Election Commission (CEC),
the US
government envoy James Baker submitted a proposal to divide up the seats of the
CEC amongst all parties. This proposal and subsequent drafts were criticized
for favoring pro-presidential parties and opposition parties held protests
outside parliament demanding both more seats on the CEC and the resignation of
Shevardnadze. Consequently members of the CEC resigned. Amendments to the
proposal were finally accepted in August and the CEC was reinstated. OSCE/ODIHR
who monitored and assisted with the pre-election process stressed that
preparations for the elections were seriously hampered by continuing
uncertainties in the run-up to the elections.
There
was intense confusion over voter lists also. In July the Ministry of the
Interior submitted amended updates of electoral rolls to be computerized by the
CEC. These were found to omit up to 10% of the population and to include names
of dead and fictitious people. Criticism of the electoral rolls in the run-up
to the elections led authorities to permit citizens to appeal and several lists
were changed. However, public confidence remained low and many citizens felt
that there was no point in voting at all. According to a poll of 600 people in Tbilisi
published by the weekly, Kviris Palitra,
25% of respondents said they would not protest if they found they had been
omitted from the lists as they felt the outcome of the election was
predetermined. There
were also cases of intimidation and misuse of state-owned resources by the
pro-government For a New Georgia (AS) bloc.
During
election day the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM), composed of
experts from the OSCE/ODIHR, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, European Parliament
and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, recorded instances of
ballot stuffing, multiple voting, use of pre-marked ballot boxes and
destruction of ballot boxes. Problems were particularly acute in the Adjara and
Kvemo Kartli regions, where turnout data was also highly doubtful. In Adjara,
the authorities claimed 289,000 registered voters, (an increase of 22% compared
to 2000) of whom 97% voted for the pro-presidential party Union of Democratic
Revival. According to the findings, some members of precinct and district
election commissions were directly involved in producing dishonest election
results and the CEC failed to act on these discrepancies. In
addition, IEOM complained that last minute decisions made by the CEC undermined
the potential democratic and transparent nature of their work.
Preliminary
results made public by the CEC on 3 November differed radically from those
given by two independent exit polls: GSM, at the request of independent TV
station Rustavi-2, and Niccolo M & Sora for State TV. The independent
election watchdog, International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy
(ISFED),
also conducted a parallel vote tabulation. The data from ISFED and GSM
indicated that the opposition National Movement (EM) led by Mikhail Saakashvili
had a clear lead over the pro-Shevardnadze AS bloc, whilst the CEC results
indicated the opposite, suggesting that the elections had been rigged in their
favor.
The
situation was compounded by the fact that the authorities only released
official results three weeks after election day, giving the AS 84 seats, the
Union of Democratic Revival party (DAK), who on 10 November affirmed support
for Shevardnadze, 39 seats and the EM 36 seats. Individual complaints against
the results were heard by a number of courts prior to the events of 22/23
November, but disputes were only clarified in a small number of cases.
Mounting
public outrage at the discrepancies in the voting results led to daily protests
by opposition supporters in Tbilisi
and other big cities. Opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili declared the
results fraudulent and demanded the resignation of President Shevardnadze.
Pro-presidential supporters also took to the streets of the capital on 18
November and held a vigil outside parliament. However, government supporters
coming from outside the capital did not experience the restrictions on the
freedom of movement as did those supporting the opposition rallies. Both
national NGOs and international players issued statements condemning the rigged
election process and called on the government to respect the civil and
political rights of the citizens by permitting new, independent elections.
National Security Council Secretary, Tedo Djaparidze, proposed to alleviate the
tensions by allowing the newly elected parliament to convene and “swiftly call
for new elections.” He was subsequently dismissed from office by the president
on the grounds of sympathy with the opposition.
Whilst
the protests were, on the whole peaceful, on 19 November, opposition supporters
holding a peaceful demonstration were assaulted by pro-government supporters in
Bolnisi. There was reportedly no police intervention. Moreover, Giorgi
Mshvenieradze, an election monitor who was monitoring the proceedings on behalf
of the independent Georgian Young Lawyers association, was imprisoned for 3
months on charges of hooliganism, “infringing upon the expression of the will
of the electorate” and “committing a crime against a government official.”
Mshvenieradze had sought to draw the attention of the IEOM to irregularities
and had attempted to stop a plainclothes policeman from bringing blank ballots
into the polling station apparently intended for ballot box stuffing.
Human rights organizations protested the arbitrary nature of the detention.
On
22 November, 20,000-30,000 opposition supporters demonstrated in Tbilisi’s
central square to prevent the new parliament from convening, and later they
stormed the parliament building following Saakashvili’s issuance of an
ultimatum for the resignation of the president. Shevardnadze resigned on 23
November, following talks with the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, and
opposition leaders. The Georgian Supreme Court subsequently annulled the
election results on 25 November. The 1999 parliament voted to hold presidential
elections on 4
January 2004 and Nino Burjanadze, former speaker of the
parliament, took the role of acting president. By the end of December, an unprecedented
willingness was displayed amongst opposition parties and parliament speakers to
stand behind Saakashvili in his bid for president. An OSCE long-term election
observation mission was re-established in the country and a number of countries
pledged assistance with the 2004 elections.
Freedom of Expression and the Media
During
the administration of President Shevardnadze, the right to freedom of
expression was more or less respected as the government did not interfere
unduly with the media. The media reflected a wide range of political views, but
there were sporadic attacks on independent journalists and independent media
outlets continued to face severe economic pressure.
- On the evening of 28 March, four axe-wielding men
knocked down the antenna on the roof of the building where the office of
the independent radio station Dzveli Kalaki was located. The station was
known for its independent editorial policy and its willingness to report
on politically sensitive issues. No one was injured, but the station
remained off the air for more than two weeks. The case was first handed by
the Military Prosecutor's Office because one of the suspected attackers
was a military officer. The Military Prosecutor’s Office dropped the case
due to lack of evidence and the file was handed to the City Prosecutor's
Office, which launched an investigation in April. The outcome was not
known to the IHF at the end of 2003. During the month preceding the
incident, station staff had endured verbal and physical harassment by
local Georgian Orthodox extremists who opposed the station's weekly
20-minute program about the country's local Catholic minority.
Rustavi - 2
In
2003, the television station Rustavi-2 was targeted by a broad government
campaign to harass and discredit it. Rustavi-2 was the main independent
television station until it gradually began to support Saakashvili. After the
change of government, it openly declared itself to be on the side of the
“victors.”
Rustavi-2’s investigative biweekly program,
"60 Minutes," was at the center of attacks because it disclosed
corruption and other abuses by authorities and powerful business people. Later,
it reported extensively on the anti-Shevardnadze demonstrations. On 10 March,
the Supreme Court published a statement requesting the prosecutor general to
conduct a criminal inquiry into "60 Minutes." The 16 February edition had revealed that
government officials, whom the program had previously caught on hidden camera talking
about bribes they had taken and engaging in other corruption, had been fired
and later rehired. Rustavi-2 also faced a 10-million-Lari (€3.95 million)
criminal libel lawsuit in the Supreme Court that was unrelated to the court's
request for an investigation into the station. Valeri Asatiani, the former
minister of culture, had filed the suit against the station in April 2000 after
"60 Minutes" had featured a convicted criminal accusing her of
ordering him to murder her business partner. Rustavi-2 had to pay 50,000 Lari
(€19,700) in “moral damage” to Asatiani. Other government officials also had
filed suits in lower courts against "60 Minutes."
In
the lead-up to the November elections, the Shevardnadze government held
Rustavi-2 largely responsible for the political crisis and increased
intimidation and pressure against it. On 13 November, when the election results
had still not been published, the CEC cancelled Rustavi-2's accreditation
because the station broadcast a message from the Kmara student movement, which
called on the commission to stop falsifying the election results.
On
29 December a rocket attack was carried out against Rustavi-2. It damaged the
façade of the Rustavi-2 building but caused no injuries. The station’s
transmission was blocked for several weeks in the Adjaria region.
Defamation Legislation
Defamation
legislation was frequently abused to shield those in power from media scrutiny.
Both civil and criminal defamation laws provided for harsh sentences of those
found guilty. Soon after coming into power, the Saakashvili government
suggested introducing lengthier sentences for defamation of public officials.
According
to NGO “Article 19,”Georgian defamation laws were not up to par with
international standards. In addition to providing for criminal defamation,
which is not acceptable under international standards, the Civil Code contained
a dangerously broad definition of people who
could be sued for defamation. The provisions were not developed in sufficient
detail to provide the safeguards necessary to protect freedom of expression.
“Article 19” recommended that defamation be decriminalized; that public bodies,
including bodies forming part of the legislative, executive or judicial
branches of government, be barred from suing for defamation; that statements of
opinion as opposed to factual accusations not be actionable in defamation; that
Internet service providers and others performing similar functions be shielded
from liability; that there be a defense of reasonable publication; that damages
awarded always be proportionate to the harm suffered; and that a fixed ceiling
be established for non-material harm.
Aftermath
of the “Rose Revolution”
Under the new
government, the media continued to operate relatively freely. However, in early
2004, there were concerns that the diversity of the media was being
significantly reduced since most of the media formerly connected to the
opposition now supported the government, leaving very few outlets that did not
have a pro-government orientation. In early February 2004, two television
stations, Rustavi-2 and Mze, simultaneously stopped broadcasting popular
evening talk shows that discussed political issues. This led to concerns that
the government was trying to control the media prior to the parliamentary
elections at the end of March 2004.
In early 2004, the media situation in the Adjaria
Autonomous
Republic
caused serious concern. Several journalists were physically attacked or
prevented from working in this region.
Torture,
Ill-Treatment and Police Misconduct
Georgia acceded to the The UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment in 1994. It ratified the European Committee for the Prevention of
Torture in June 2000, which entered into force in October 2000. Torture was a
punishable offence under article 126 of the Criminal Code. However, amendments
made to Criminal Code following Georgia’s accession to the
Council of Europe in 1999 hampered the possibility to file complaints with a
court for abuse during the investigation period.
In 2003,
the Constitutional Court of Georgia took some positive formal steps against torture
and ill-treatment. On 29 January, it declared unconstitutional some provisions
of the Criminal Procedure Code, which had served as a legal basis for abusive
police practices. The court declared unconstitutional the provision that had
denied detainees the right to contact a lawyer or a relative and to request
medical expertise within the first 12 hours of detention. In a similar vein, it
abolished the article that had limited detainees’ contact with a lawyer to one
hour per day, and infringed upon the defender’s right to become acquainted with
the case materials. Further, while the code stated that the period of
preliminary detention could be more than nine months, the court stated that the
maximum nine months included the period of the first court hearing.
On 12
February, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional article 142 of the
Criminal Procedure Code, which had permitted detention based on suspicion that
a person committed a crime; if the person had no permanent residence; or if
his/her identity was not determined. The article had been used extensively by
law enforcement agencies in illegal detentions, followed by various violations
of human rights, including physical and psychological pressure and torture.
In September, top government officials agreed on a Plan of Action against Torture in Georgia, due to be implemented in 2003-2005. The plan, which was drawn up in cooperation with the OSCE, includes, among other things: bringing Georgian legislation up to par with OSCE and other international commitments regarding torture, improving investigations of alleged of torture, enhancing control of police and prison facilities, training officials, and establishing control bodies. As a key element of this action plan, a website was launched by the Human Rights Department of Georgia's National Security Council with the support of the OSCE Mission to Georgia.
International
organizations, including the UN Committee against Torture and the Council of
Europe’s Committee to Prevent Torture, issued highly critical reports about the
use of torture and ill-treatment in Georgia
in the past and demanded that the government take decisive measures to put an
end to them. The European Committee cited abuses such as slaps, punches, kicks
and blows struck with truncheons, gun butts and other hard objects. The most
serious cases involved the infliction of electric shocks, asphyxiation by using
a gas mask, blows struck on the soles of the feet and prolonged suspension of
the body upside down. Torture and ill-treatment were often accompanied by
procedural violations such as the failure to bring detainees personally before
a judge when deciding on detention, the failure to notify family members of the
detention and the restricted access to lawyers
and doctors.
Despite
formal legislative improvements, however, reports of police ill-treatment
continued. It was reported that in the first three months of 2003 alone, some
137 detainees with bodily injuries were taken from the Ministry of Interior’s
temporary detention isolator to the penitentiary department.
·
Kartlos Nakhalov was reportedly tortured with electric
shocks in the Didube-Chgureti police department in early 2003. A medical doctor
certified traces typical to electric shocks behind his ears.
·
In another case, the head of the Expert Center of the Justice
Ministry, Maia Nikoleishvili, applied on 5 March for the involvement of an
expert to look into the case of a citizen who was beaten by the police. This
person preferred not to give his identity for fear of retribution after being
threatened with death if he filed a complaint about police brutality.
·
The
attorney of Gocha Bregadze and Revaz Purtskhvanidze, both of whom were arrested
on 28 February, claimed that his clients were tortured with electric shocks at
the police station of Kutasi. The local police denied the allegations.
- On 16 June, 38-year-old Merab Chukhasvili was
allegedly tortured by police officers in the building of the Interior
Ministry in Tbilisi to make him to confess to a kidnapping. Chukhasvili
fainted during his trial and doctors said he required an urgent operation
because electric shocks had damaged his internal organs.
The Prosecutor General,
Nugzar Gabrichize, said that detainees frequently fell victim to police
ill-treatment when being transported from police detention stations to prisons.
He said that the Justice Ministry started to keep a record of such cases, but
law enforcement agencies have failed to take any disciplinary measures. He also
noted that there were 108 cases of illegal detention of individuals in 2002,
officially on suspicion of drug consumption.
Further investigations revealed that none of the detainees had been
under the influence of drugs.
According to Maia Nikoleishvili, head of the Expert Center of the Justice
Ministry, “most policemen consider that crimes can be revealed only by means of
violations, beatings, and electric shock methods of torture.”
The assistant public
defender, Ramaz Ninua, noted that victims of police brutality often filed
complaints of police abuse but later withdraw their statements, apparently
after being threatened or offered bribes to remain silent.
Freedom of Religion
Georgia
continued to be the only former Soviet republic without a law on religion to
define the rights and obligations that religious communities have. The status
of the largest religious community, the Georgian Orthodox Church, was regulated
by a controversial concordat that it signed with the state in October
2002. This concordat provided it with
various privileges, including the right to provide religious education in
schools and broad powers to decide on the status of other religious
communities. The
Catholic Church was expected to be the second religious community to gain legal
status through signing an agreement with the state in September 2003. In an
embarrassing move, the government abruptly cancelled the signing at the very
last minute, apparently under pressure from the Orthodox Patriarchate. The
Catholic Church has had great difficulty trying to recover churches confiscated
during the Soviet period and handed over to the Orthodox Patriarchate in the
1980s and 1990s.
On a positive note, the Jehovah’s Witnesses
Watchtower Bible Society was able to restore its legal status as a
non-commercial organization on 28 November.
According
to many religious minority groups, their situation deteriorated following the
signing of the concordat between the Georgian Orthodox Church and the state.
For example, a subject called “Religion and Culture” was introduced as
compulsory to school curricula. The classes were taught by Georgian Orthodox
teachers. Other religious communities faced difficulties in carrying out their
activities and were not able to own property or maintain bank accounts. It was impossible for them to
defend their rights as legal entities.
Although the possibility for religious minority
communities to carry out activities varied considerably from region to region
depending on the attitude of local Orthodox officials, most of them faced
problems when attempting to build or open new places of worship. They also had
difficulty hiring public and private buildings for worship. In contrast, the
Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate was actively building many new churches.
Moreover,
lacking legal status, many religious minority groups were not permitted to
import religious literature. Complaints were received from Baptists, Pentecostals,
Lutherans, Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses. Local authorities
frequently stated that the minority communities would need permission from
local Orthodox officials despite the fact that there was no law to this effect.
It was also alleged that there was an unwritten rule by Patriarch Ilya that customs
officials were to ban the import of religious literature unless they had his
express permission. In addition, corrupt customs officials often
required bribes to the import religious materials. By the same token, as publishers refused to
accept it without the blessing of the Orthodox Patriarchate, for example, the
Salvation Army, True Orthodox Church, and Pentecostals faced such problems. In
addition, it was believed that many publishers feared mob violence should they
agree to print literature for religious minorities.
Religious
minorities had virtually no access to state or private media to inform the
public about their activities.
Since
1999, members of Georgia's
religious minorities, including Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics and Jehovah's
Witnesses, have suffered hundreds of physical attacks from self-appointed
Orthodox vigilantes. One of the Orthodox vigilante groups that terrorized
minorities was called Jvari. It operated in Rustavi
and its surroundings and was responsible for hundreds of attacks on Jehovah’s
Witnesses and Protestants. In November, Paata
Bluashvili and four other members of the group were sentenced to suspended
prison terms for their acts of violence against Jehovah's Witness meetings in Rustavi
and Marneuli. Bluashvili also faced a trial for similar violent assaults
against two Jehovah's Witnesses but no criminal cases had been launched against
him or any of his associates for a string of other attacks they were
responsible for.
Vasili
Mkalavishvili, a notorious mob leader and defrocked Orthodox priest, who was
responsible for brutal attacks against minority religion believers, remained in
hiding throughout the year despite an arrest warrant issued in July pending his
trial. Mkalavishvili was finally arrested in March 2004.
During his arrest, police used excessive force, injuring numerous people. Other
attackers continued to go unpunished.
- In May, Bluashvili and six colleagues raided a
private flat in Tbilisi where a Pentecostal congregation led by Pastor Nikolai Kalutsky was
meeting. Bluashvili warned them
that if he caught them meeting again they would be beaten. After that, the
self-styled Orthodox vigilantes prevented the Pentecostal congregation
from meeting there for months. The local Police Chief, Temur Anjaparidze, banned Kalutsky from using his home for
religious services without special permission and warned him that if he
did, he would be fined twice the minimum monthly wage.
- On 4 May a mob stopped the Jehovah's Witnesses
from holding a congress in the village of Ortasheni near Gori. The mayor of Gori and
the police chief warned them not to hold the congress.
- After threats by local Orthodox priest to burn
down a Baptist church in Akhalsopeli, in eastern Georgia, the building was wrecked by fire in the early hours of 15 June.
The interior burned to ashes.
After
the change of government, some religious minorities and human rights activists
hoped that the new regime would secure religious freedom and stop violence. It
appeared, however, that the new leaders, while generally declaring their
commitment to democracy and human rights, avoided using phrases such as
“freedom of conscience.”
Asylum Seekers
Chechen Refugees
Following the
outbreak of the second armed conflict in Chechnya in 1999, some 6,000
Chechens fled to Georgia, and were granted prima
facie refugee status. According the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), as of 31 March 2003, 4,000 Chechen
refugees resided in Pankisi Gorge
and 185 resided in Tbilisi. 75% of the refugees
were women, children and the elderly.
Since
their stay in Georgia,
there has been increasing concern about the respect of their basic human
rights: they have been subjected to disappearances, unfair treatment, illegal
arrests, and extradition and deportation to Russia.
These violations intensified following increased Russian pressure on Georgia
and an anti-terrorist military operation in Pankisi Gorge by the Georgian
government, backed by the US
government.
Pankisi
Gorge was isolated by police cordons from the rest of Georgia
and remained largely barred from the media and independent observers. In the
name of combating terrorism and under pressure from Russia,
in October 2002, Georgian authorities extradited five Chechens to Russia
without a court decision, and therefore in violation of Georgian law. Under the
same pretence, the Interior Ministry and security officers arrested and
detained hundreds of Chechen refugees, including women and children in
2002-2003. There were been multiple violations of the rights of detained
persons, including the denial of access to lawyers of their choice, as well as
intimidation. Before being released, all refugees were fingerprinted without a
court decision as if they were criminal suspects. In 2002, the “mop-up”
operations resulted in disappearances, intimidation and ill-treatment of
refugees.
- Hussein Yusupov was
released from the Georgian Security Minister detention in August 2003.
Yusupov, a 25-year-old student and Chechen refugee, was arrested on 20 September 2002 at the checkpoint in Pankisi Gorge, and immediately taken to the
police department in Akhmeta. The same day, he was transported to the
anti-terrorism center of the Ministry of State Security in Tbilisi. On 25 September he made a phone call to his
mother telling her that there would be no trial and that he would released
immediately. After that, no one heard from him until his release 11 months
later. His mother, who had tried to find out his whereabouts, had been
officially informed by the Prosecutor’s Office and security offices that
her son had been released on 25 September 2002 and that he had not been registered in any
detention facility in Georgia after that date. Yusupov’s detention was in
violation of Georgian law which required that charges be brought within 48
hours of detention or suspects must be released. However, no
investigations were initiated into his illegal detention.
With
the approach of presidential elections in Chechnya,
Russia
intensified its efforts to bring all Chechens back home to vote for a
pro-Russian president and tried to convince the world that the conditions in
that region were satisfactory for refugees to return.
In
October 2003 the Georgian government hosted the Russian Minister of Chechen
Affairs, Mr. Iliasov, who, inter alia,
visited Pankisi Gorge to persuade refugees to go back to Chechnya.
In spite of Iliasov’s promises to provide free transportation, pay
compensations for destroyed property, etc., not a single Chechen refugee
accepted his offer. The main purpose of Iliasov’s visit was to sign a protocol
with the Georgian Interior Ministry under which Georgia
undertook to encourage the Chechen refugees to go back to Chechnya. Remarkably, international organizations,
NGOs, other independent stakeholders and the Ministry of Justice which is
normally in charge of issues like these, were not invited to take part in this
process. Furthermore, under the protocol, the Georgian Interior Ministry
guaranteed the safety and security of Chechen refugees in Chechnya,
although it is not clear what mechanisms are available to the Georgian Interior
Ministry to control the situation in Chechnya
and to hold the Russian government responsible if safety and security are not
observed. There was reason to believe, therefore, that by entrusting such an
important mission to the Ministry of Interior, the government of Georgia
will use illegitimate mechanisms, including intimidation and blackmailing, to
force the Chechens to go back to Chechnya.
Although
there was a medical clinic in Pankisi Gorge, the health status of many refugees
remained deplorable due to a desperate shortage of medical supplies. After
going through the horrors of war and brutal treatment, most Chechen refugees
suffered from various serious psychosomatic disorders which could not be
handled by the elementary medical care that was available to them.
There
were virtually no opportunities for paid employment or self-employment for
refugees. The Chechens received no allowance and depended entirely on rations
provided by the UNHCR. Elementary schools for refugee children did exist in
Pankisi Gorge, but the quality of education was very poor as there was an
inadequate supply of textbooks. Teachers were not paid.
As an alternative to
the prolonged stay of Chechen refugees in Georgia, which apparently
was not welcomed by the Georgian government and, due to insecurity and exposure
to a number of dangers in Georgia, including potential
forcible return, many Chechens applied to third countries for admission. The
UNHCR adopted the strategy of resettlement of Chechen refugees to a “safe third
country,” excluding Russia.
In
May 2003, representatives of IHF and its affiliate, the Caucasian Centre for
Human Rights, held meetings with the representatives of Chechen refugees in
Tbilisi. In a letter to the UNHCR, the IHF expressed great concern regarding
the situation of refugees. In October, another fact-finding mission was carried
out to Pankisi Gorge. It was carried out jointly with the Norwegian Helsinki
Committee and the Caucasian Centre for Human Rights (Caucasia).