Sopo Getsadze
On May 20, the video studio of the Human Rights Center HRIDC.TV screened a new documentary “Operation - “Mutiny” at the Tbilisi Cinema House. The film is about the “mutiny” in the Mukhrovani Military Base in 2009.
The documentary film highlights those violations which were observed from the very beginning of the so-called Mukhrovani Mutiny till the end of the court hearing. The lawyers of the convicted for the “Mutiny” speak about the circumstances when military servants were arrested. The film uncovers absurdly formulated accusations - like “attempt to store the weapon,” “organizing make up of a “mutiny” and even – “assistance to himself in organizing the mutiny”. The detention of an 8-month-old child was also mentioned in the documentary; having heard it the audience bitterly smiled.
Working on the film “Operation – “Mutiny”, the film director Giorgi Janelidze managed to video-interview only the defendant side. Governmental officials refused him to comment on the fact. The author tried to maintain the balance by using the archive materials of various media sources.
“The Committee of Defense and Security of the Parliament of Georgia completely ignored our letter. The City Court refused to allow us to video-interview even the speaker-judge,” film-director Giorgi Janelidze said.
After screening the film, the spectators expressed their opinions about the film and about famous incident in the Mukhrovani military base.
Galiana Oziashvili, Movement “Veterans for Vetarns”: “I radically disagree with the formulation of applications submitted to the Strasbourg Court; for example, “Otanadze VS Georgia.” The applications shall not be submitted against Georgia! They should appeal against the government of Georgia, those deserters, who should not be equaled with Georgia at all.”
Eter Grigalashvili, mother of the convicted Beka Grigalashvili: “My son is in prison for resistance and attempt to store weapon. None of the prosecutors, lawyers and nobody at all could explain what “the attempt to store weapon” meant. My son asked the judge – “what does the attempt to store weapon” mean?” and the judge suggested him to ask the question to the prosecutor. The prosecutor replied him with irony: “I will explain to you when you are released from prison.” Beka was sentenced to 15-year-imprisonment. The worst thing is that instead properly praising these boys, who fought in Abkhazia and Samachablo, are imprisoned today.
Lasha Chkhartishvili, Conservative Party: “Mikheil Saakashvili is adventurist person and does not avoid committing crimes to achieve his political goals; among them he can commit crime that can damage individual person, group of people or even the entire country. The Mukhrovani case is a classic example how Mikheil Saakashvili sacrificed the Georgian army and its many honorable servants to the implementation of his concrete local political goal. He wanted to discredit the ongoing mass protest demonstrations of the society and to get rid of certain people from the army, armed forces and other law enforcement institutions. The film confirmed that all 29 people, who were convicted, were arbitrarily detained and were sacrificed to Saakashvili’s performance. This performance was necessary to divert the public attention from the extremely hard situation in the country.”
Nodar Epremidze, military expert: “Saakashvili tried to show to the society as if military servants were fighting against him, as if there were spies in our country and the country failed to become a state because of those people. You should remember that soon after the Mukhrovani incident, the TV-Company Imedi released the so-called simulated chronicle. It was one chain-process, logic continuation of the situation. As for the recent events in Mukhrovani base, when analyzing them, we should also recall the incidents of 2001 when Otanadze and Krialashvili really participated in the disobedience. They had social requirements then: the soldiers had not received salaries for 14 months; moreover, the military servants even became blood donors to keep their families and their requests came from their hard social conditions. Later, in order to better convince the society, the government blamed those two people into the incidents that occurred on May 6, in 2009; so the society could easily believe that Otanadze and Krialashvili could disobey the orders again. It was Saakashvili’s trick. Otanadze and Krialashvili had nothing to do with the incident in Mukhrovani. With the performance, they tried to divert the attention from that time alarming situation in the country. Entire Georgian population was requesting resignation of Saakashvili.”
The audience underlined the importance of the movie. Lasha Chkhartishvili said, the film is particularly important for those people, who do not live in Tbilisi and unbiased information is not available for them.
“We often hear accusations about Russian involvement in similar incidents. However, as a rule, these accusations soon disappear. In this particular film we saw that government spoke about cooperation between military servants and occupants, but later those accusations disappeared. The court did not discuss this accusation at all. It is good method to mitigate the solidarity and sympathy of the society towards arbitrarily detained people.”
When speaking about the importance of the film, Giorgi Janelidze said the position of the government of Georgia was clear to the society. The film demonstrates the position of the prisoners, former military servants and their lawyers. “We showed the positions of both sides; and the audience shall judge and evaluate them now,” said Janelidze.
The relatives of the prisoners, journalists, military experts, members of the opposition political parties and non-governmental organizations attended the film presentation.
May 21 is the two-year anniversary from the bloody special operation for the detention of the so-called organizers of the Mukhrovani “mutiny”. 18 military servants were sent to prison from 3 to 29 years terms.
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