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Ketevan Tsikhelashvili: “It is illegal when freedom of movement is violated”

January 29, 2016
 
Lado Bitchashvili, Shida Kartli

In 2015, 341 persons were arrested for illegal crossing of the so-called “border” to occupied Abkhazia and 162 to the occupied Tskhinvali region. Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) spread information about it based on the data provided by the State Security Service of Georgia.

In 2009-2015, 2 481 citizens of Georgia were arrested for illegal crossing of the so-called border; among them 1 641 were arrested when traveling to Abkhazia and 840 when travelling to the Tskhinvali region.
After the January 20, 2016 meeting in the frame of the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism, the head of the analytic department of the State Security Service said 11 citizens of Georgia were arrested for crossing the so-called border in December 2015 and in January 2016. All eleven persons were released. The de-facto court of Tskhinvali convicted one citizen of Georgia for illegal crossing of the border and sentenced him to one-year imprisonment. 

Humanrights.ge interviewed deputy state minister for reconciliation and civic equality of Georgia Ketevan Tsikhelashvili about the situation in the villages adjacent to the occupied regions. 

According to the official information, number of detention facts of the Georgian citizens has increased when crossing the so-called border. Does the state have any strategy to address the problem and how do you plan to combat similar facts in the conflict zone?

It is illegal when freedom of movement is violated. Sometimes people are arrested in groups when crossing the border. It further burdens the situation. Even the arrest of one person is very serious problem.

Artificial barricades should not exist at all and people must not be arrested when crossing the border. This problem gets particular sensitive during holidays. We wish to make border-crossing easier for the people who seek medical assistance, for children and local inhabitants and who cross the so-called border to cultivate their plots or celebrate holidays. 

When person is arrested, we apply concrete mechanisms to release the detainees in the limited period of time. The first mechanism is communication with the de-facto control bodies. EUMM gets involved in the communication process, who contacts the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia through hotline.

Russian soldiers arrest the people and assign them to Ossetians, who extort money from the families – approximately 2 000 Russian rubles that is huge burden for the local families.  

All villages located close to the ABL in Gori Municipality are supplied with natural air. Pkhvenisi is one of the villages, whose inhabitants were promised by the government to be supplied with gas. When will the village receive gas?

Since the government took responsibility to supply the villages on the ABL with gas, we will keep the promise. However, we have managed to do it in some villages while the process was delayed in others. So, we will repeat past year experience and give out firewood vouchers to locals. We are working on the gasification process to supply all villages on the ABL with gas in near future. The state supplies them with gas for free.

During the IPRM meeting in Ergneti you spoke about cleaning of the Tiriponi channel which is located on the occupied territory. What other procedures are needed for the functioning of the channel and are there additional obstacles for it? When can the state resolve the problem of irrigation channel?

During the January 20 meeting, we discussed this issue in details. The specialists also presented their views. There were some positive reactions which convince us to continue working on the cleaning of the Tiriponi channel. This issue requires everybody’s engagement and both conflicting parties are interested to clean it.

Thus, since we have positive reactions, we continue working with international partners and hope will have real result soon.

What kind of infrastructural projects are planned in the conflict affected villages?

We continue implementation of the programs, which were launched first in 2013. Much is done in the field of education and healthcare. Kindergartens were opened where it was necessary. We have many new initiatives and hope donors will fund our ideas that will create sources for economic welfare in the region and encourage new economic initiatives.

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