RELIGIOUS MINORITIES SAY THEY STRUGGLE TO HAVE THEIR LEGAL RIGHTS TO FREE WORSHIP RECOGNISED
By Fati Mamiashvili

Caucasus Reporting Service
20-Feb-09

Statistics shows violence against religious minorities in Georgia
was practically non-existent last year, but believers say bureaucrats
are making life hard for everyone but the Orthodox Church.

Most Georgians belong to the Orthodox Church, however in some regions,
particularly near the borders with Turkey and Armenia, there are
significant numbers of Muslims and Christians from Armenia’s Apostolic
Church.

Although they have lived in the region for centuries, members of
minority faiths say they struggle to have their legal rights to free
worship recognised. While they are free to operate by law, they say
they face bureaucratic discrimination.

Tariel Nakaidze, who represents Georgian Muslims in the Council for
Religious Tolerance, said the difference in approach is particularly
marked in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region, home to many Muslims, as
well as Armenians, who make up the majority of its population.

"In the last few years the approach to questions about building mosques
has changed, rather than the actual opinion of it. If before there
was open aggression against it, now there are these small obstacles
that mean we just can’t gain official permission," he said.

I n the Black Sea region of Ajara, which has a large Muslim population,
several mosques have been built in recent years, but none of them
have been sanctioned by officials.

"Last year, the Georgian Muslims built a mosque in Aspindza, and the
head of the local administration asked if we had permission from the
patriarchate," said Nakaidze.

"In 2007 there was a mass attack on a mosque built in 1917 in the
Adigeni region. There was a similar incident in December last year
in the village of Chela, where more than 100 people scaled the roof
of the mosque and started to shout ‘you are not Georgian, this is no
place for you’. The incident only did not turn serious because the
police and the Muslim Council intervened."

Legally, the Orthodox patriarchate has no right to interfere in the
affairs of Georgia’s Muslims, but the church has such influence in
everyday life, that it is inevitable.

"The architectural service and especially the patriarchate do not
have the right to block construction of a religious building. This
is an artificially-created problem. The influence of the patriarchate
is very great in Georgia and therefore state structures try to avoid
conflicts with the church. This is why permission is not given for
the construction of religious buildings," said Beka Mindiashvili,
head of the state ombudsman’s centre for tolerance.

In the 1990s an d the first half of this decade, the situation
was very different. Then firebrand Orthodox preachers like Basil
Mkalavishvili, who was expelled from the official church in 1995,
inspired believers to combat the spread of protestant and other
minority groups in Georgia. In 2002-3, the ombudsman received more
than 800 complaints about attacks on religious communities.

Since then – and since Mkalavishvili was arrested in 2004 – such
attacks have dwindled. Indeed, statistics shows violence against
religious minorities in Georgia was practically non-existent last
year. But they still do not feel comfortable.

"In Saragejo, a local Orthodox man threw a bottle full of petrol at
our hall, which was being built, and a representative of the local
administration advised our lawyers not to make a fuss about this,
and just to make the criminal write a confession, since he did not
consider it to be a major crime," said Manuchar Tsimintia, a lawyer
for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Georgia.

Multi-national Georgia, a pressure group uniting 56 non-governmental
organisation and 18 communities, has campaigned for religious equality
since 1998. Agit Mirzoev, its executive director, even raised the
question of the pressure being put on religious minorities at a United
Nations conference in Geneva in 2007.

"I think that all believers in Georgia should enjoy equal conditions,"
Mirzoev said.

Fati Mamiashvil i is a correspondent with the Rustavi 2 television
company.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress