Georgia: Ethnic Armenians Want Better Deal

Armenians urge Tbilisi officials to show more concern for their region.

A group of around 20 Armenians from the southern region of Javakheti are this week having unprecedented talks with Georgian cabinet ministers to discuss the region’s many social problems.

The three-day meeting, set to begin on April 14, is seen as a test of the Georgian authorities’ commitment to the under-developed region, in which around 90 per cent of the population is ethnic Armenian.

The Javakheti Armenians are meeting with officials in the education, culture, transport and conflict settlement ministries in Tbilisi and also the parliamentary human rights committee.

If new policies come out of the talks it will be a significant victory for the young delegation, most of whose members come from a newly formed organisation called Yediny Javakhk, or United Javakheti.

If not, it may strengthen the hand of sceptical Armenians who say Tbilisi is deliberately neglecting the region.

Yediny Javakhk shot to prominence on March 13 – just three days after it was first founded – when it organised a meeting of 8,000 people in the centre of Akhalkalaki, the main town of Javakheti.

The organisation’s mainly young members said they had come together so quickly in response to reports that the pro-government Georgian youth movement Kmara was planning a protest rally in Akhalkalaki, against a local Russian military base which is the main centre of employment for the local population.

But the young Yediny Javakhk quickly split into a more moderate and more radical wing.

While the moderates sought to contact the Georgian government, the radical members undertook political agitation, brought people to the rally, made banners and invited a pop group from Armenia to perform.

“We want to achieve the rights that our people are entitled to as citizens of Georgia,” Artur Pogosian, one of the leaders of the moderate wing, told IWPR. “We do not want to be second- or third-class citizens.

“For the last 15 years our people have been silent and loyal to all three presidents of Georgia. And today the time has come for the government to pay attention to us.”

The radicals have refused to take part in the Tbilisi delegation.

Vaag Chakhalian, one of the more radical leaders of the organisation, is sceptical about the moderates’ approach.

“If they really want to solve problems, then we are ready to work with them,” he told IWPR.

But he insisted this could not take the form of opposition figures being bought off with highly paid jobs in government, “We need problems to be put to them and to be solved.”

Tbilisi political analyst Gia Nodia said he was not surprised by the schism. “[This organisation] is the latest attempt to find some common interests or common demands, around which people can unite,” he told IWPR. “But differences in interests, conceptions of strategy or political ambitions generally stand in the way of this unity.”

At the March 13 rally, Pogosian read out a letter to the government of Georgia setting forth the problems of the region, one of the most backward in Georgia.

Many of the issues – including ineffective local government, poor electricity supply, bad roads and problems with customs, taxes and passports – also apply elsewhere in the country.

Others are specific to Javakheti – like the demand that Armenian history be taught in schools and that official paperwork be done in the Armenian language as well as Russian.

But calls for autonomy or secession from Georgia were muted at the rally, in contrast with the more nationalist days of the early 1990s.

A major demand is for the government in Tbilisi to ease pressure on the Russian military base in Akhalkalaki, which large numbers of locals regard as an important strategic and economic asset in the region.

“It’s always the ordinary folk who suffer,” said local resident Bograt Kakosian, “those in comfortable jobs don’t have any problems.”

“People are selling their last calf to get a visa and move to Russia – and there, because relations between Russia and Georgia are so bad, they risk getting deported just because they are a citizen of Georgia. And if they close the base, it will be bad for us in Georgia too.”

Most of those who came to the rally were seasonal workers, who find employment in Russia for part of the year because there are no jobs at home. Until recently, they had to spend time and money getting foreign passports in the regional capital Akhaltsikhe. But following the rally, the government has set up a new passport office in Akhalkalaki.

Artur Yeremian – the gamgebeli, or governor, of Akhalkalaki – says problems like this occur because the central government does not understand the complexities of the region.

“Every ministry is told to carry out reforms,” he said. “But no one is interested how they come about, [even though] every region has its special features.”

One of the leaders of Yediny Javakhk, who asked to remain anonymous, said the main reason for the region’s social ills was the domination of several powerful clans, who operate according to their business interests, are supported by the authorities in Tbilisi and Yerevan, and have influence on the local government.

Nodia explained that one of these clans in particular, grouped around the family of parliamentarian Melik Raisian, had enabled the government in Tbilisi to exert control over the region.

“[The government] gave the leaders who spoke out against Tbilisi well-paid posts,” he told IWPR. “And by doing so, it calmed them down. This policy went on under Shevardnadze and there has not been any principled change of policy under the current government. It is relying on influential local players and not on civic democratic progress.”

Nodia said that these kind of intrigues had naturally made people suspicious about the new Yediny Javakhk movement, “Many people thought the rallies in Akhalkalaki were designed to discredit someone so someone else could take his place… that it was being done to strengthen the position of people close to [interior minister Vano] Merabishvili or to the president.”

Merabishvili comes from Samtskhe-Javakheti and wields a lot of influence in the region. On March 27 he met the Yediny Javakhk moderates and persuaded them not to take part in a rally that had been called for March 31. He himself promised to visit the region in May and check on the enforcement of government policy there.

At the meeting with the minister, the decision was taken to create a Javakheti Public Committee which would be in regular consultation with the government in Tbilisi.

“I see the solution in a dialogue between representatives of the region and the authorities, so the authorities understand what we want,” said Samvel Manukian one of the Yediny Javakhk moderate leaders. “If not, we will call another rally in the middle of May.”

In the event, the March 31 rally was dominated by the Sport-Cultural Union of Youth of Javakheti, JEMM, which has more of an Armenian nationalist agenda – amongst other things, it calls on Georgia to recognise the Armenian genocide of 1915.

Vaag Chakhalian of JEMM said he saw no point in negotiating with the Georgian government because he said the Javakheti Armenians had been deceived many times in the past.

Olesya Vartanian is a correspondent with Southern Gates newspaper in Samtskhe-Javakheti region, which is supported by IWPR.