Special press-conference of Irakli Kakabadze and Ucha Nanuashvili on increasing racism, xenophoby and militarism in Georgia

Publicist Irakli Kakabadze and the Executive Director of the Human Rights Centre will host a press-conference dedicated to expressions of racism, xenophoby and militarism in Georgia. The press-conference will be held at the Human Rights Centre office on 29th of July 14:00.

The international society, heads of friendly states and other influential personalities have expressed their opinion that the territorial integrity of Georgia can only be restored only by the development of democracy and economic growth in the country. Despite this, President Mikheil Saakashvili continues his militarist campaign which finds expression in different unclear initiatives time after time. One of such initiatives are ammendments to the “Law on Army Reserve Service” accepted by the parliament in accelerated, gurrilla way on 21st of July.

According to the official text of the law the reserve service implies mandatory calls for citizens under 40 several times in a year with the total number of days not exceeding 45 annually. The previous system which has siezed existance in August 2008 implied the 18 day mandatory reserve service courses once in a year for citizens between 27 and 40.

By these changes the parliament has legalized President Saakashvili’s militarist expressions from the last year. Specifically, during the opening of the new buildings for the National Guard Saakashvili stated that the defence of the country is not the obligation of the Ministry of Defence solely: “12 thousand soldiers alone can not stop the treacherous enemy which are the heirs of Mongols, threaten our borders and have invaded the country, occupying its territories”.

According to saakashvili everyone capable of fighting including women should be ready: “In our situation each man and women must be ready to fight for Georgia” ... “Each Georgian family, each street, region, district, village, city, each settlement and each house and family should be ready to become the bastion for freedom of Georgia”. “We have learned onee thing: no one will do your business for us... when it comes to protection of Georgia, every single one of us should be involved in this – 100, 200, 300 thousand men and even half a million should take arms if necessary. We can get enough guns and we have them, we have more then enough armament as well. Now we need one little thing – enough number of well prepared men”.

Parallel to this militarist statements the TV station of the Ministry of Defence “Sakartvelo” was continuously runing video clips on military reserve service where the citation of the godfather of Fascism, Adolf Hitler as a prestigious example, was used in a positive context: “We should understand once and for all that lost territories can never be returned by neither prayers which have turned into formality and nor by the League of Nations but only by the force of arms”.

Alongside these militarist statements, incorrect racist expressions are also observed in President Saakashvili’s speeches. Specifically, on July 27th while meeting highly ranked customs authorities Saakashvili commented on a bad habbit of opening bags: “Are we nigers? Why we behave like wild?”

Racism and xenophoby, encouraged by the government is growing roots into the society. We observe increasing insulting xenophobic statements towards Africans, Chinese or Indians in the media. The chairman of the council of the “Institute of Liberty who is a friend of many highly ranked Georgian authorities and whos opinion is influential for the government has moved even furhter. The insulting caricatures of President Obama, several of them with racist content are still published and publically accessable on his private web-page.

It is regrettable that the fascism, racism, xenophoby and militarism are being encouraged by the time when the majority of population still supports Georgian integration into the EU and NATO.

Human Rights Centre