Institute for War and Peace Reporting
April 14 2005

GEORGIA: ARMENIANS BARGAIN WITH GOVERNMENT

A delegation of Armenians seeks a shift of policy in Tbilisi

By Olesya Vartanian in Akhalkalaki and Tbilisi

In the first meeting of its kind, a group of around 20 Armenians from
the southern region of Javakheti are meeting Georgian cabinet
ministers to discuss the region’s many social problems.

The three days of talks, set to begin on April 14, are seen as a test
of the Georgian authorities’ commitment to the under-developed
region, in which around 90 per cent of the population is ethnic
Armenian.

The Javakheti Armenians will meet with officials in the education,
culture, transport and conflict settlement ministries in Tbilisi and
also the parliamentary human rights committee.

If new policies come out of the meetings it will be a significant
victory for the young delegation, most of whose members come from a
newly formed organisation called Yediny Javakhk, or United
Javakheti.

If not, it may strengthen the hand of sceptical Armenians who say
Tbilisi is deliberately neglecting the region.

Yediny Javakhk shot to prominence on March 13 – just three days after
it was first founded – when it organized a meeting of 8,000 people
in the centre of Akhalkalaki, the main town of Javakheti.

The organization’s mainly young members said they had come together
so quickly in response to reports that the pro-government Georgian
youth movement Kmara was planning a protest rally in Akhalkalaki,
against a local Russian military base which is the main centre of
employment for the local population.

But the young Yediny Javakhk quickly split into a more moderate and
more radical wing.

While the moderates sought to contact the Georgian government, the
radical members undertook political agitation, brought people to the
rally, made banners and invited a pop-group from Armenia to perform.

“We want to achieve the rights that our people are entitled to as
citizens of Georgia,” Artur Pogosian, one of the leaders of the
moderate wing, told IWPR. “We do not want to be second- or
third-class citizens.”

“For the last 15 years our people have been silent and loyal to all
three presidents of Georgia,” he added. “And today the time has come
for the government to pay attention to us.”

The radicals have refused to take part in the Tbilisi delegation.

Vaag Chakhalian, one of the more radical leaders of the organisation,
is sceptical about the moderates’ approach.

“If they really want to solve problems, then we are ready to work
with them,” he told IWPR.

But he insisted this could not take the form of opposition figures
being bought off with highly paid jobs in government, “We need
problems to be put to them and to be solved.”

Tbilisi political analyst Gia Nodia said he was not surprised by the
schism. “[This organisation] is the latest attempt to find some
common interests or common demands, around which people can unite,”
he told IWPR. “But differences in interests, conceptions of strategy
or political ambitions generally stand in the way of this unity.”

At the March 13 rally Pogosian read out a letter to the government of
Georgia setting out the problems of the region, one of the most
backward in Georgia.

Many of the issues – including ineffective local government, poor
electricity supply, bad roads and problems with customs, taxes and
passports – also apply elsewhere in the country.

Others are specific to Javakheti – like the demand that Armenian
history be taught in schools and that official paperwork be done in
the Armenian language as well as Russian.

But calls for autonomy or secession from Georgia were muted at the
rally, in contrast with the more nationalist days of the early 1990s.

A major demand is for the government in Tbilisi to ease pressure on
the Russian military base in Akhalkalaki, which large numbers of
locals regard as an important strategic and economic asset in the
region.

“It’s always the ordinary folk who suffer,” said local resident
Bograt Kakosian, “those in comfortable jobs don’t have any problems.”

“People are selling their last calf to get a visa and move to Russia
– and there, because relations between Russia and Georgia are so bad,
they risk getting deported just because they are a citizen of
Georgia. And if they close the base, it will be bad for us in Georgia
too.”

Most of those who came to the rally were seasonal workers, who find
employment in Russia for part of the year because there are no jobs
at home. Until recently, they had to spend time and money getting
foreign passports in the regional capital Akhaltsikhe. But following
the rally, the government has set up a new passport office in
Akhalkalaki.

Artur Yeremian – the gamgebeli, or governor, of Akhalkalaki – says
problems like this occur because the central government does not
understand the complexities of the region.

“Every ministry is told to carry out reforms,” he said. “But no one
is interested how they come about, [even though] every region has its
special features.”

One of the leaders of Yediny Javakhk, who asked to remain anonymous,
said the main reason for the region’s social ills was the domination
of several powerful clans, who operate according to their business
interests, are supported by the authorities in Tbilisi and Yerevan,
and have influence on the local government.

Nodia explained that one of these clans in particular, grouped around
the family of parliamentarian Melik Raisian, had enabled the
government in Tbilisi to exert control over the region.

“[The government] gave the leaders who spoke out against Tbilisi
well-paid posts,” he told IWPR. “And by doing so, it calmed them
down. This policy went on under Shevardnadze and there has not been
any principled change of policy under the current government. It is
relying on influential local players and not on civic democratic
progress.”

Nodia said that these kind of intrigues had naturally made people
suspicious
about the new Yediny Javakhk movement, “Many people thought the
rallies in
Akhalkalaki were designed to discredit someone so someone else could
take
his place. that it was being done to strengthen the position of
people
close to [interior minister Vano] Merabishvili or to the president.”

Merabishvili comes from Samtskhe-Javakheti and wields a lot of
influence in
the region. On March 27 he met the Yediny Javakhk moderates and
persuaded
them not to take part in a rally that had been called for March 31.
He himself promised to visit the region in May and check on the
enforcement of government policy there.

At the meeting with the minister, the decision was taken to create a
Javakheti Public Committee which would be in regular consultation
with the government in Tbilisi.

“I see the solution in a dialogue between representatives of the
region and
the authorities, so the authorities understand what we want,” said
Samvel
Manukian one of the Yediny Javakhk moderate leaders. “If not, we will
call another rally in the middle of May.”

In the event, the March 31 rally was dominated by the Sport-Cultural
Union
of Youth of Javakheti, JEMM, which has more of an Armenian
nationalist
agenda – amongst other things, it calls on Georgia to recognize the
Armenian genocide of 1915.

Vaag Chakhalian of JEMM said he saw no point in negotiating with the
Georgian government because he said the Javakheti Armenians had been
deceived many times in the past.

Olesya Vartanian is a correspondent with Southern Gates newspaper in
Samtskhe-Javakheti region, which is supported by IWPR.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress