TBILISI WITNESSES UNHOLY ROW
By Fati Mamiashvili and Sara Khojoyan

Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Dec 18 2008
UK

Call for commission to settle long-running dispute over ownership of
Tbilisi church.

At around midday on November 16, 22-year-old Alexander Oganov saw a
bulldozer next to the Armenian church named "Holy Norashen" in the
old town district of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

In the churchyard, Oganov saw that the tombstones of 19th century
Armenian benefactor Mikhail Tamashev and his wife Lidia had been
prized up from the ground. The young man photographed the scene on
his mobile phone and then called the police.

"In the churchyard I saw Father Tariel, who is the priest of the
Georgian church next door to Norashen," said Oganov. "He told me,
‘Don’t worry, we’re cleaning the churchyard and levelling the ground
and we will put the tombstones back later’."

Later, after the police arrived, the tombstones were indeed put
back. But this did not prevent a furious row from breaking out,
with Armenian parishioners complaining that the Georgian priest had
insulted the memory of the dead.

The episode has rekindled the long-running row between the Georgian
Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church over the ownership
and upkeep of a number of churches on Georgian territory. Amongst them
is the Norashen church in Tbilisi, which the Armenians lay claim to
but which is still owned by the Georgian state.

The row was poorly covered in the Georgian media, with television not
devoting any attention to it at all. In Armenia, however, a series
of angry articles was published, some of them accusing Georgians
of carrying out "enforced Georgianisation" of Armenian churches
in Georgia.

After, Armenian bloggers leapt into action, a protest rally was held
outside the Georgian embassy in Yerevan on November 27, with the
demonstrators demanding the Georgian authorities stop destroying
Armenian cultural monuments.

Vardan Astzatrian, head of the department of nationalist minorities
and religion in the Armenian government, called the incident an act
of vandalism.

"This kind of thing can only happen in a country which is not taking
proper care of things," said Astzatrian. "Moreover, this kind of
action can be very dangerous for the maintenance of stability which
is very important now in the region."

However, Father Tariel, the Georgian priest at the centre of the row,
told IWPR that there had been merely a misunderstanding.

"I would never dishonour graves, even if they were the graves of
[medieval Muslim conquerors of Georgia] Jalal ad-din and Shah Abbas,"
said the priest. "The ground had sunk in that place and I wanted to
level it out again but they didn’t let me."

Mikhail Avakian, spokesman for the Armenian diocese in Georgia, said
he doubted Father Tariel’s version of events. "Cleaning up is the
job of the appropriate mayoral service and not Father Tariel," he said.

This was the latest episode in a long-running quarrel between the
local Armenians and Father Tariel. In May, he had a fence built
alongside one of the walls of Norashen covered in Georgian orthodox
symbols. The priest said he had done this with the permission of the
mayor’s office to help protect the church.

The Armenian diocese called for the fence to be taken down – something
which has not yet been done.

Father Tariel says the Armenians are causing trouble because they want
to get their hands on the Norashen church, whose origins are disputed.

According to Georgia’s 2002 census, Armenians comprise 7.6 per cent
of the population of Tbilisi. A century ago, the Armenian population
in the city was much larger. Georgians and Armenians view the history
of the city in completely different ways.

The Armenian diocese says that Norashen is an Armenian church dating
back to the 15th century. Avakian said that in the 1930s the Bolsheviks
closed it for worship, used it as a book warehouse and handed the
building over to the local government.

The Georgian historian Bondo Arveladze says that Norashen was illegally
built by Armenians on the ruins of an Orthodox church.

"In the archives you won’t find any document authorising its
construction issued by the tsar or the patriarch of that time,"
said Arveladze.

Ever since Georgian regained its independence in 1991, the Armenian
diocese has tried unsuccessfully to recover Norashen. The church
is still owned by the ministry of economics, with the ministry of
culture responsible for its upkeep.

Nikloloz Antadze, who is responsible for the protection of monuments at
the ministry of culture, said that Norashen was not in need of urgent
help and that the issue of its restoration was not on their agenda.

The doors of the church are currently locked. One of the last men
to gain entrance was Father Tariel, a decade ago. He briefly began
holding Georgian services there.

"I didn’t break into the church I simply opened the doors," said
Father Tariel. "The wooden alter was already rotten, we erected a
Georgian one in its place and started to conduct services there,
although the patriarch soon stopped us from doing that."

The Armenian and Georgian churches have agreed to resolve their
differences over Norashen and five other disputed churches, but the
commission tasked with doing this has not yet been set up.

"The political authorities have to form a commission which will
put an end to this conflict," said Levan Ramishvili, head of the
non-governmental Liberty Institute. "If the church is Armenia then
it ought to be given back to the Armenians. The commission should
first establish whose it is."

Armenian prime minister Tigran Sarkisian reportedly raised the issue
during informal talks with his Georgian counterpart on a visit to
Tbilisi on December 9.

In the meantime, the Georgian-Armenian society Nor Serundi (meaning
New Generation) has taken on the role of mediator in the dispute.

"We live together in Georgia and nothing should divide us," read
the slogan of around 300 Armenians and Georgians who formed a human
chain linking a series of Georgian and Armenian churches, amongst
them Norashen. The head of the society, Mari Mikoyan, blamed people
for whipping up tensions about this issue.

"This country is still in a state of war," said Mikoyan, whose father
is Armenian and whose mother is Georgian and who was awarded a medal
for her services as a front-line doctor in the August war over South
Ossetia. "Anyone who artificially raises the issue of disputed churches
and tries to trade on it is an enemy of his people and religion!

"The time has come for historians, cultural scholars and diocesan
officials to think about this."

Fati Mamiashvili is a reporter with Rustavi-2 television in
Tbilisi. Sara Khojoyan is a reporter with Armenianow.com in Yerevan.