Papuashvili: Georgia breaks the rights of forced migrants

The rights of forced migrants in Georgia are violated since the country's leadership lacks clear programme and coordinated actions, as well as due legislation on how to tackle their problems. This was stated by lawyer Simon Papuashvili, coordinator of the project on rendering legal aid to refugees at the Human Rights Centre, in his interview to the Caucasian Knot correspondent.

"The problems that we face when trying to monitor the conflict zone are stemming out of the complete inability of Georgian leaders to coordinate their care about health, lives and safety of the population with other issues. People, including women and children, are in inhuman conditions. I mean the housing facilities where they have to live - without proper nutrition, elementary health services, complete disregard of hygienic requirements," the human rights activist has added.

According to Mr Papuashvili, the situation is not changing for the better, since these forced migrants were not provided even with a respective status.

While assessing the situation with human rights in Georgia before the August events and today, he stated the absence of any essential changes.

"Naturally, the problems persist with the freedom of media, independence of the judiciary and impunity syndrome in the officials. It's difficult for me to indicate any trend that the human rights situation has degraded, but we watch certain incidents, for example, the murder of Roin Shavadze in Batumi and similar incidents, where the impunity syndrome in top officials has reached its peak, when special agents are violently murdering a person in the eyes of the people in broad daylight; earlier, it didn't happen," the human rights activist said.

When comparing the situation in the buffer zone during the August conflict and today, he has noted that the situation has changed for the better against August and September.

"However, it refers only those villages, which are not located right on the administrative border or in the adjacent territory. Most of the population has come back there. Those villagers whose houses had been burnt down are rendered certain help, including from the international community. As to the second category of villages - those located close to the administrative border - the situation is more complicated: frequent incidents take place - shelling, Ossetian armed groups penetrate from the other side of the border and rob houses or just insult people. However, there are villages that remain practically abandoned even today," the human rights activist has regretfully noted.

Simon Papuashvili has confirmed the statement of human rights activist Paata Zakareishvili published in the "Resonansi" newspaper, in which he has stated that "Georgian special agencies are spreading disinformation in Georgian press and among public that allegedly the Ossetian party in the village of Akhalgori is forcing Georgian young men into the Ossetian home guard and holding forced passportization of Georgians."