Eurasianet Organization
June 23 2004
GEORGIA’S TREATMENT OF AZERI MINORITY RAISES CONCERNS
Fariz Ismailzade: 6/23/04
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s recent summit meeting with
President Mikheil Saakashvili took place amidst growing reports of
official harassment of Georgia’s Azeri minority, the country’s second
largest ethnic group. Promises made by Saakashvili to improve living
conditions for these Azerbaijanis have not been fulfilled, community
leaders say. The controversy comes as Saakashvili’s corruption
crackdown zeroes in on ethnic Azeri traders in the southern
Kvemo-Kartli region who are suspected of running smuggling operations
into Azerbaijan.
On May 25 more than 400 ethnic Azeris gathered in the district of
Marneuli to protest what they claim is an ongoing campaign of
repression by Kvemo-Kartli’s governor, Soso Mazmishvili, a member of
Saakashvili’s ruling National Movement bloc. Kvemo-Kartli contains
most of Georgia’s 500,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis, who work primarily as
rural laborers.
Protestors said that Saakashvili’s campaign promises that they would
see significant improvements in their living conditions have led to
little change since the reform leader was elected president in
January. Power sharing has yet to occur, they say.
“Azerbaijanis are forced out of their jobs and new people, who belong
to the ruling clan, are appointed. It does not make a difference if
these new people can work or not,” said Alibala Askerov, the head of
the national movement “Geyrat” (Honor). “Thus, the new regime is
trying to make a full change at all of the levels of the governmental
hierarchy and Mazmishvilli is in charge of this process in
Kvemo-Kartli.”
Land distribution drives concerns in this regard. More than 70
percent of local Azeris still are not able to privatize or rent plots
of land. Locals say that Georgian authorities disproportionately
favor Georgian farmers in land privatization, thus leaving ethnic
Azerbaijanis without land or forcing them to rent it from Georgian
farmers at high prices.
Resentment at land privatization has been simmering in Kvemo-Kartli
since ex-President Eduard Shevardnadze’s time, but a more recent
government policy has fanned the flames higher. As part of the
anti-corruption campaign, security and police forces in early June
raided the houses of several Azerbaijani businessmen in Kvemo-Kartli
region and arrested them on charges of trans-border smuggling. Trade
in agricultural products is the main source of income for Azeris
living on both sides of the border.
Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani media is expressing worries about the
situation in Georgia. Analysts in Baku often see Saakashvili as less
sympathetic to Azeri Georgians than his predecessor and more intent
on using nationalism to bolster Georgian morale. On June 8, the
independent daily Zerkalo warned that the ethnic tensions in
Kvemo-Kartli region paralleled those that had occurred in Armenia in
1988 prior to the start of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, a conflict that
left some 200,000 Azerbaijanis refugees. [For background see the
Eurasia Insight archive]. Other media outlets have speculated that
continued discrimination against ethnic Azerbaijanis in Georgia could
lead to a flood of refugees crossing into Azerbaijan.
Both Azerbaijan and Georgia have rushed to deny reports in the
Azerbaijani media of increased discrimination against ethnic
Azerbaijanis in Georgia and to dispel rumors, reported in the
Azerbaijani media, that a border checkpoint has been closed.
Embassies of both countries have released statements asserting that
the arrests were only intended to combat smuggling and have no
relationship with ethnic discrimination.
Instead, both countries are resolutely pushing friendship as their
official line. Since Saakashvili came to office in November 2003,
bilateral trade between Georgia and Azerbaijan has tripled to an
estimated $106 million, and plans to slash railroad freight fees and
construct a proposed $700-800 million railroad from Azerbaijan to
Turkey via Georgia could eventually boost that figure higher.
Saakashvili and Aliyev have also agreed to expand the two countries’
joint energy projects, a potentially lucrative field currently
dominated by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhran oil pipeline, scheduled for
completion in 2006, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum natural gas
pipeline, scheduled for construction in 2004.[For background see the
EurasiaNet archive].
Official Azerbaijani media outlets and Georgian media appear to have
skirted the issue of ethnic Azeri complaints altogether in their
reports of a June 16 visit to Marneuli by President Aliyev to meet
with representatives of Georgia’s Azerbaijani population. “[T]he warm
brotherly relationship established between Presidents Ilham Aliyev
and Mikhail Saakashvili is a graphic evidence of [the] inviolability
of the Azerbaijani-Georgia relation,” the official news agency
AzerTag reported about the event.
Editor’s Note: Fariz Ismailzade is a freelance writer on Caucasus
geopolitics and economics based in Baku.