Georgia's (Mis)Treatment of the Meskhetians
It is important that readers know that I am not anti-Georgian. However, I am opposed to Georgia's use of violence to force reintegration of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. I am also against Georgia's leadership inflaming nationalism and mistreatment of ethnic minorities.
Georgian leaders have claimed that the Abkhaz people were not native to Abkhazia and had been moved there during the Soviet period. If it were not so threatening, such a falsehood would almost sound comical. The truth was that the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin (an ethnic Georgian), moved thousands of Georgians into Abkhazia. In the period after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Georgian nationalists spoke darkly of limiting the number of "non-Georgians" in the country to 5%. After Georgia was admitted to the United Nations in 1992, it attacked Abkhazia. Little wonder that the Abkhaz people resisted.
Recently a report (http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4b1e0df41a.html) was released by the United Nations Refugee Agency criticizing Georgia's treatment of another ethnic group, the Meskhetians, native to Georgia proper. The Meskhetians were deported during Stalin's era. The report states that:
"The Georgian government is coming under fire for its handling of requests for resettlement from Meskhetians, an ethnic group deported by Stalin in 1944.
The Turkish-speaking Meskhetians were among a group of nations exiled from the Caucasus in 1943-4 on charges of treachery, but - unlike the Chechens, Karachais and others - have never been allowed to return home."
The Meskhetians were originally exiled to Uzbekistan, but conflict in the late Soviet period drove them to Russia's Krasnodar Region and to Azerbaijan. Most are very poor. Spending 65 years on the move does not help a community to thrive. They have the legal right to return to their ancestral homeland in Georgia. However, poverty, conflict with Georgians and the Georgian government have all made it very difficult.
The report continues:
"In the first place, it is necessary to increase the number of people working on their repatriation. It is necessary to set up a more or less independent service, which will control this process. It is necessary to solve the questions of housing, language and many others," said Temur Lomsadze, deputy chairman of the Fund for Assistance of Repatriation.
Iulon Gagoshidze, the state minister for diaspora matters, said Meskhetians could receive Georgian surnames, and a fast-track route to citizenship if they provided all the correct documents to the state commission. But activists say it is very hard for them to produce documents, considering the regular disruptions they have suffered since their deportation.
They need to collect 13 different documents, printed either in Georgian or English, which is difficult since most of them speak Russian. The Meskhetian organisation Vatan said it costs 100 to 120 US dollars to collect the documents, which is a huge sum for many would-be repatriants and a problem that the government says it is working on.
I have met Meskhetians living in Azerbaijan. They live very poorly, and all the necessary certificates - birth, marriage, health conditions, place of residence - must be paid for and are not cheap. But it is hardest of all to find archive materials to confirm their deportation in the 1940s," Gagoshidze said."
In many cases even those who fulfill the requirements are refused permission by the government to return to Georgia.
Georgia receives a large share of its budget in aid from the United States. But until Georgia renounces violence in its efforts to reintegrate South Ossetia and Abkhazia, all but humanitarian aid should be withheld. Further, the American taxpayers should not be paying for Georgia's incompetent leadership to build its military while preventing the Meskhetians from returning to their homeland.
2 Comments
Reader Comments (2)
Bruce, you say "Georgian leaders have claimed that the Abkhaz people were not native to Abkhazia and had been moved there during the Soviet period". Yet, I have not heard from the geo gov't (well, at least not the current one) any statements along these lines. Are you talking about political leaders or just nationalists? And if so, which ones? Is this from the 90's or more recent? From ordinary Georgians, there are a range of other statements, such as "Abkhazians are a North Caucasian tribe that migrated downward" to "Abkhaz and Georgians have always lived there" but I've never heard any of them say that Abkhaz were moved there during Soviet times.
Regarding nationalism and mistreatment of ethnic minorities, if we go by what is officially said as well as personal stories, those two things can be found throughout the whole Caucasus, not just Georgia. It's like the Balkans; everyone blames Serbs for being nationalists and the cause of unrest, when in reality everyone was quick to jump on the nationalist bandwagon.
Regarding Stalin moving Georgians there, what is your definition of a Georgian? Some people claim Megrels, Achars, and Svans are not Georgian, however according to the ones that live in Georgia (as well as non-Megrel, Achar, and Svan Georgians), they are ethnically Georgian.
I've never heard of Georgian nationalists limiting the number of "non-Georgians" to 5%. Do you remember what their names were? I only know a couple of names, such as Khaindrava, Ioseliani, Gamsakhurdia, Kitovani, etc.. There were nationalists among both common people and politicians, which one is this referring to? Do you have a link for this?
I don't understand the connection between the Abkhaz and the Meskhetians here. According to you, the Abkhaz are ethnic minorities, which would mean that they are ethnically not Georgian. However, you say the the Meskhetians are "native to Georgia proper." Would this not make them ethnically Georgian, and therefore, not an ethnic minority group, and therefore, not comparable to Abkhazia and South Ossetia?
Regarding the Meskhetians, what you forgot to mention in your post was that the region of Georgia that they were exiled from, Samtsxe-Javakheti (formerly called Meskheti), is now a majority Armenian region. Besides the need for documentation, which unfortunately is complicated by the fact that Meskhetians have been exiled for so many years and therefore may have lost/damaged their paperwork, one other reason why the government is hesitant about allowing them back in is because the Armenian population, which forms 80-90% of the whole region, does not want the Meskhetians back.
From what I've heard (and read), if enough Meskhetians were settled back, the Armenians are scared that those "Turks" (since they are culturally very Turkish, correct?) will outnumber them. Given the history between Turks and Armenians, this sounds like a recipe for disaster. If all the Meskhetians were allowed back, there would be huge civil unrest in Javakheti, maybe even a new war would start there. In addition, Georgian-Armenian diplomatic relations would also take a huge blow. In light of this, I think that the Georgian government, regarding this issue, is "damned if they do, damned if they don't", so they just picked the route that would cause the least damage to the country.
Sorry, in the 4th paragraph that first sentence should read "I've never heard of Georgian nationalists saying they wanted to limit the number of "non-Georgians" to 5%."