Orthodox extremists attack an Evangelical congregation
By Emil Adelkhanov
HRWF International Secretariat (29.12.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - At about 1 p.m. on Sunday 23 December, 2001, some 50 or 60 followers of the ultra-Orthodox Father Basil Mkalavishvili and he himself, in person, came in a bus to Iveria Cinema, rushed into the cinema hall where a service of the Fully Evangelical Church "The Word of Life" was going on, and started to beat the Evangelists. After 20 minutes another bus brought other 40 or 50 kindred spirits, and the scuffle went on.
According to Pastor Mamuka Jebisashvili, two of his parishioners, Kakha Chkhaidze and Badri Machitashvili, were beaten most cruelly. Several other men (Ramaz Jeladze, George Machitadze, Jemal Sakuashvili, Vazha Jabanishvili and others) and women (Endi Mamatelashvili and others) were also beaten. The assailants snatched out women's bags, got into pockets, took away money and documents. They also took away a Yamaha synthesiser and microphones, as well as some money that belonged to the church. They broke the pastor's pulpit, an audio system (a tape-recorder, a sound mixer, an amplifier and dynamics), a projection apparatus, etc. They tore several copies of the Bible and New Testament and other religious literature.
They also broke the camera of a TV man from the TV company "Ajaria" who was filming the incident. Some of the assailants tried to rush into the next room, where children were gathered for a Christmas service, but a woman who assisted the service was quick enough to lock the iron door. The police were called up. They helped the Evangelists to take the children out and prevented the assailants to took away the Evangelists' coats from the entrance hall, but they did not enter the hall where the mess was going on.
Journalists from two Georgian TV channels, Ajaria and Rustavi-2, filmed the incident, and it was shown on both channels the same day.
According to one of the victims (a woman named Endi Mamatelashvili, who was beaten by several men), when she applied to the City Hospital No 1, the doctor said he saw every sign of concussion, but the deputy head physician said it was just nervous and, in fact, forbade him to write down the diagnosis.
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Major confessions gave advance consent to Patriarchate-State concordat
Keston News Service (11.10.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (12.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Although some of their representatives have expressed concern about the prospect of a constitutional agreement, or concordat, between the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Georgian state, Keston News Service has learned that Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Jews, Muslims and the Armenian Apostolic Church signed formal documents with the Orthodox Patriarchate agreeing to just such a concordat, even before the introduction of associated constitutional amendments on 30 March. The main government official in Georgia in charge of religious issues told Keston on 21 September that he was surprised these six major confessions had given advance agreement to the concordat.
Despite this agreement between the historical religions, the Catholic Church is still in conflict about the restitution of churches handed over by the Soviet authorities to the Orthodox Church in 1989-1990 in Kutaisi and elsewhere. Moreover, the Catholic Church faces difficulties when it attempts to build churches - such as the obstruction by the authorities in the towns of Kutaisi and Akhaltsikhe by the secretary to the head of the Apostolic Administration of the Caucasus.
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Georgia Supreme Court exonerates
victim of mob attack
(12.10.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (15.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - October 12, 2001Yesterday, Mirian Arabidze, a victim of a mob attack on a congregation of Jehovahs Witnesses in the Gldani district of Tbilisi, was fully exonerated by Georgias highest court. The three-member body of the Chamber for Criminal cases of the Supreme Court needed only moments after hearing arguments and viewing video footage of the attack to render its decision. Two years ago, Mirian Arabidze along with more than 100 fellow believers were attacked and beaten with clubs and iron crosses by a mob of some 200 religious extremists led by defrocked Orthodox priest Vasili Mkalavishvili. Within weeks, Arabidze was falsely charged and convicted on the charge of hooliganism.
The ruling annulled the conviction handed down by the judge of the court of first instance, as well as the decision of the appeal court to send the matter back for further investigation. Although all evidence, including videotape footage, clearly showed that Mr. Arabidze was a victim of the October 17, 1999 Gldani mob attack, the investigator nevertheless charged him while refusing to charge those responsible for the attack. Various governments, Human Rights Organizations, and the News Media have stated that the case gave the distinct impression that the Police and Prosecutors Office are cooperating with the religious extremists who carried out the attack. The issue of prosecuting the authors of the 1999 Gldani attack is presently before the European Court of Human Rights.
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Challenge Shevardnadze on religious violence
Human Rights Watch (02.10.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (03.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - President Bush should raise Georgias deteriorating human rights situation with President Eduard Shevardnadze, Human Rights Watch said today. President Shevardnadze begins a five-day visit to the United States today.
In a letter sent yesterday, Human Rights Watch drew President Bushs attention to the escalating group violence against Christian worshippers of non-Orthodox faiths in Georgia. The attacks are growing in frequency and ferocity due to police complicity and the governments failure to prosecute those responsible. Human Rights Watch also urged President Bush to question President Shevardnadzes record on combating torture. In 1999, President Shevardnadzes appointees supported the derailment of reforms to the criminal procedure code that aimed to curb the widespread practice of torture by Georgian police. Minor improvements to that law enacted this year fall short of a commitment to end torture.
"President Bush should make it clear that the new global fight against terrorism will not close the U.S. governments eyes to mob beatings of peaceful religious worshippers," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watchs Europe and Central Asia division. "If Georgia wants to be considered a serious long Cterm partner it has to enforce the rule of law."
Human Rights Watch has received reports of three mob assaults on non-Orthodox Christian groups in the last week alone. On September 28, Georgian police reportedly stood aside to allow a mob of 100, armed with clubs and stones, to erect a roadblock on a highway leading out of the capital, Tbilisi. The mob stopped buses and cars transporting some 100 Jehovahs Witnesses to a religious convention, dragged them out, kicked and beat them. They injured up to forty people, nearly a dozen of them seriously. The mob then attacked the convention site in the town of Marneuli, ransacking and burning property, injuring more people, and firing shots into the air. Police not only failed to intervene to stop the assaults, but allegedly confiscated film and a video camera from Jehovahs Witnesses, and verbally derided them. On September 23, a mob attacked an evangelical church service in Tbilisi, reportedly injuring sixteen worshippers. On September 30, a group of approximately fourteen men reportedly attacked a Jehovahs Witness prayer meeting in the town of Rustavi.
The Georgian authorities know the perpetrators of many of the mob attacks, which have been growing in intensity for two years. Vasili Mkalavishvili and other leaders make frequent media appearances, openly broadcast their planned attacks, and claim that they receive support from the police and security services. None of the leaders has been arrested for their role in any of the attacks.
On August 29 Human Rights Watch published a 14-page memorandum documenting the growing official intolerance of non-Orthodox Christian groups in Georgia, and the escalation of mob violence against them. The memorandum called on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to visit Georgia and investigate.
President Shevardnadzes visit to the United States comes a week after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a highly critical resolution detailing Georgias failure to honor human rights obligations it assumed upon joining the organization in 1999, and urging major reforms to bring the country into line.
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Patriarchate monopoly on state religious education
Keston Institute (02.10.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (03.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Georgia's main government official in charge of religious issues denies that the Orthodox Patriarchate has a monopoly on state religious education, but no-one else Keston News Service spoke to on this subject in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, agreed with this view.
The Patriarchate is already among the bodies with which the Ministry of Education develops syllabuses for state schools, and the as yet unsigned spring 2001 draft constitutional agreement between the state and the Orthodox Church goes further in giving the Patriarchate sole initiative for such programmes.
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Resolution 1257 on the honoring of obligations and commitments by Georgia (25-09-2001)
The Assembly welcomes the efforts Georgia has made since its accession on 27 April 1999 towards honouring some of its obligations and commitments, which it accepted in Assembly Opinion No. 209 (1999).
With regard to the signature and ratification of conventions, the Assembly is pleased to note that:
Georgia ratified, within the deadlines in Opinion No. 209, the European Convention on Human Rights as well as its Protocols Nos. 4, 6 and 7;
to date, Georgia is the only member state which has, on 15 June 2001, ratified Protocol No. 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights;
Georgia also ratified the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and its Protocols Nos. 1 and 2, the European Convention on extradition and its Protocols, the European Convention on mutual assistance in criminal matters, the
General Agreement on Privileges and Immunities and its Protocols, and signed the revised European Social Charter;
it also ratified the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol thereto.
On the other hand, the Assembly regrets that Georgia:
did not ratify within one year after its accession the Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights it signed on June 1999, nor the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities it signed in January 2000;
did not sign nor ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the European Charter of Local Self-Government, the European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation and its additional Protocols, nor the European Convention on laundering, search, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds from crime.
With regard to domestic legislation, the Assembly recognises that Georgia has adopted laws in many fields, including an Electoral Code, a Law on the Bar, a new Law on Imprisonment, a General Administrative Code, a law amending the Law on the Ombudsman, a law amending the Law on local self-government, but is preoccupied by the lack of enforcement and recalls the need for a proper implementation of existing legislation.
The Assembly also supports initiatives taken to combat and eradicate endemic and wide-spread corruption in the country and in this context welcomes the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Programme.
With regard to the implementation of reforms, the Assembly acknowledges that measures have been taken to improve the functioning of the judiciary, especially in respect of the fight against corruption and incompetence in the judiciary, the monitoring of the execution of judgments, as well as the reform of the Prosecutors Office. It also notes positive steps undertaken to reform the penitentiary system, i.e. the transfer of the prison administration from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Justice, the building of a new prison, and measures to fight corruption.
In order to solve the persisting problems in the administration of justice, the Assembly calls on Georgia to accelerate these and other reforms underway and to implement them according to Council of Europe standards, in particular as regards the functioning of the judiciary and the conditions of detention in prisons and pre-trial detention centres.
With regard to domestic legislation and implementation of reforms, the Assembly urges Georgia to strengthen co-operation with the Council of Europe in order to ensure full compatibility of Georgian legislation with the Organisations principles and standards, and in particular:
to co-operate with the Council of Europe legal experts on a number of bills which have been prepared recently, including a new draft law on the police, a draft law amending the law on the Prosecutors Office, a draft law on development of alternative punishment and to prepare these items of legislation and ensure that they are enacted by the Georgian Parliament by January 2003 at the latest;
to implement the recommendations made by Council of Europe experts on criminal procedures, the role of the Prosecutors Office, police arrest, pre-trial investigation and pre-trial detention;
in close co-operation with the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to implement the recommendations made following its visit in May 2001;
to submit for expertise the newly adopted Election Code to the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in order to assess that the current electoral legislation takes full account of recommendations made in 1999 by the Parliamentary Assembly ad hoc Committee on the observation of elections and by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR);
to co-operate with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE) in a constructive manner, and in particular:
to implement recommendations the Congress made in 1999 to enhance local and regional self-government in Georgia, including adoption of amendments to existing legislation, new legislation and administrative measures, in accordance with the European Charter on Local Self-Government;
to transmit for expertise the text of the law amending the Law on Local Self-Government;
to accept assistance in the preparation and observation of the forthcoming local elections;
to organise without delay a colloquy on regionalisation which could help to clarify Georgian regional structure and territorial organisation.
to step up co-operation within the "Group of States against corruption" (GRECO) with a view to applying its recommendations on the fight against corruption;
to accelerate the work undertaken with the Council of Europe and the UNHCR on the question of the repatriation of the deported Meskhetian population, including on-going legal expertise of the draft Law "on repatriation of persons deported from Georgia in the 1940s by the Soviet regime", with a view to granting them the same status of rehabilitation as that already given to deportees of other ethnicities that were repatriated to Georgia under the Soviet regime.
As regards the freedom of the press and mass media, the Assembly calls on Georgia to draft and adopt a law on the electronic media, in order to regulate media activity and to guarantee independence, pluralism and objectivity of Georgian electronic media, and to consult Council of Europes experts on any new draft legislation.
In respect of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Assembly regrets that the new Code which was initially drafted in close consultation with Council of Europe experts, was expurgated by numerous amendments adopted by the Parliament in the weeks following the accession of the country to the Organisation in May and June 1999, and that a new package of amendments was adopted in June 2001 without previous consultation of Council of Europe experts. It strongly urges the Georgian authorities to improve substantially co-operation with the Council of Europe in this respect.
The Assembly regrets that little progress has been made as regards respect of human rights:
it expresses its deep concern on allegations of ill-treatment or torture of detainees in police custody and pre-trial detention, cases of arbitrary arrests and detentions, violation of rights under police arrest or in pre-trial detention C in particular the right to consult a lawyer and the right to communicate with the family C complaints on violation of procedural rights, cases of intimidation, violation of the right to privacy, phone taping, etc;
it is alarmed by the behaviour of police and other law enforcement bodies and condemns any disproportionate violence used by security forces against peaceful demonstrators;
it is also strongly concerned about repeated cases of violence by Orthodox extremists against believers of minority religious groups such as Jehovah Witnesses and Baptists.
The Assembly urges the Georgian authorities to conduct a proper investigation into all cases of human rights violation and abuse of power, to prosecute their perpetrators irrespectively of their functions, and to adopt radical measures to bring definitely the country into line with the principles and standards of the Council of Europe.
The Assembly invites the Georgian authorities to authorise publication of the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture an Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment on the visit it carried out in May 2001.
In respect of commitments related to the status of the autonomous territories and the settlement of territorial conflicts by peaceful means, the Assembly welcomes progress made in granting autonomous status to Adjaria in April 2000, but regrets that no substantial progress has been made on a political settlement of the South Ossetian and Abkhaz conflicts, in spite of the efforts of the Georgian government.
However, the Assembly recognises that the conditions were not met for the Georgian authorities to fulfil their commitments to enact a legal framework determining the status of the autonomous territories, and to elaborate a legal framework for the establishment of a second parliamentary chamber.
As regards the Abkhaz conflict, the Assembly:
calls on Georgian and Abkhaz leaders to continue their talks on the status of Abkhazia and on the return of all displaced persons who wish to do so, to Abkhazia;
recalls that Georgia must take legislative and administrative measures providing for restitution of property or compensation for property lost by persons forced to abandon their homes in the 1990-1994 conflicts.
In the light of the considerations above, the Assembly concludes that, although some progress has been made since accession, Georgia is far from honouring its obligations and commitments as a member state of the Council of Europe. The Assembly resolves to pursue the monitoring procedure in respect of Georgia in close co-operation with the Georgian delegation.
Assembly debate on 25 September 2001 (26th Sitting) (see Doc. 9191, report of the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe, rapporteurs: Mr Diana and Mr E?rsi).
Text adopted by the Assembly on 25 September 2001 (26th Sitting).
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World watches as religious extremists continue
reign of terror in Georgia
Georgia Office (30.09.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (01.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - At around 1:00 p.m. today, around 14 men, members of the ultra-orthodox extremist organization, Jvari, attacked a meeting of Jehovahs Witnesses in the city of Rustavi, assaulting those in attendance, and stealing literature. According to eyewitnesses, Jvari leader Paata Bluashvili personally assaulted one of the victims and boasted: Now go and file a complaint, Im not scared.
The statement typifies the ongoing seeming inaction of the police and prosecutors office, which further emboldens the extremists. According to statements of victims, members of Jvari also participated in Fridays criminal attacks by religious extremists, in which they were allowed to close a main road, assault Jehovahs Witnesses travelling to a convention, destroying their vehicles. That same morning, using sawed off shotguns and other firearms, they ransacked the convention site of Jehovahs Witnesses in the neighboring city of Marneuli, injuring dozens of delegates in the process.
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Georgia Office (28.09.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (01.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Early this morning religious extremists mounted a citywide orchestrated attack on Jehovahs Witnesses travelling to their annual religious convention in the adjacent city of Marneuli. The 100 strong mob of attackers, many of them in masks, closed a main thoroughfare, stopped the buses carrying delegates, dragged them out by the hair, threw to the ground, and assaulted them, kicking, punching them and beating them with clubs. Women, children and the elderly were not spared. At least one bus and numerous cars carrying delegates were also seriously damaged in the process.
The attackers then made off to the convention site in Marneuli where they trashed the convention site and the private residence there, and torched the benches and religious literature in a bonfire. The attack was led by renegade Orthodox Priest Vasili Mkalavishvili and his main henchman Petre (a.k.a. Gia) Ivanidze. Despite organizing and participating in dozens of attacks against religious minorities over a period of two years, neither has ever been arrested.
In contrast to attacks by religious extremists in other parts of the world, the attack here appears to have been carried out with the knowledge and tacit approval of the Police. Jehovahs Witnesses had informed the authorities well in advance of their intention to hold a convention and had received guarantees from the Police that proper measures would be taken to protect their right of assembly. Todays attack belies that statement. Victims who managed to get to police stations were derided by police officers and told that this matter was not a Police affair. Police in Marneuli observed as the convention site was being trashed, but made no attempt to intervene.
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Rebel orthodox priest attacks Pentecostal choir practice
Keston Institute (26.09.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (01.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - On Sunday evening (23 September), defrocked Orthodox priest Basil Mkalavishvili and his supporters, wielding truncheons, attacked a choir practice of a Pentecostal church in the Gldani district of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the church's pastor Zaal Tkeshelashvili told Keston News Service by telephone on 26 September.
He said he personally saw Mkalavishvili instructing his followers what to do and whom to beat.
'Twelve church members sustained serious injuries.'
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Jehovah's Witnesses challenge "dubious" Supreme Court of Georgia ruling
in European Court
www.jw-georgia.org (16.08.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (24.08.2001) (12.08.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Jehovah's Witnesses in Georgia filed their second application in two months with the European Court of Human Rights. The latest application challenges a February 22, 2001 Supreme Court of Georgia ruling later referred to by Georgian Minister of Justice Mikheil Saakashvili as "dubious." The ruling in question, while not banning Jehovah's Witnesses, annulled the registration of two of their organizations. In its ruling the Court insisted that Jehovah's Witnesses could not be registered since no "law on religion" had as yet been passed in Georgia.
The application argues that the European Convention on Human Rights, European Court precedent and Georgia's international law commitments all support the right of association, which includes the right of religious communities to use legal entities. It maintains that the Supreme Court ruling attempts to remove that right in violation of the European Convention and Georgia's own Constitution, and has resulted in a de facto ban on Jehovah's Witnesses in Georgia, as the Court walks a fine line between honoring Georgia's Constitutional and international commitments and playing to populist extremist politicians with a dark agenda.
Since the ruling there have been countless violent attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses, the latest occurring within the last week, as Orthodox extremists perceive it as a signal from the government that it is "open season" on Jehovah's Witnesses. Police and prosecutors' offices routinely dismiss their complaints despite overwhelming evidence.
Police refuse to interfere as Orthodox extremists carry out fourth attack
on Jehovahs Witnesses in Rustavi
www.jw-georgia.org (12.08.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (12.08.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Around noon today, a mob of Orthodox extremists broke down the door of the apartment of Jimsher Gogelashvili, where a religious meeting of Jehovahs Witnesses was being conducted.
The mob of 15 men, led by Paata Bluashvili and Mamuka Chupabria, seized literature and personal belongings of the around 70 Jehovahs Witnesses gathered there, most of them women and children. According to eyewitnesses, the mob then proceeded to beat those in attendance with clubs and metal pipes. Seven of the victims required medical treatment for blows to the head and the body. The mob trashed chairs, furniture and equipment, and burned the literature in a bonfire on the street outside.
Some of the victims made to a nearby Police stations, where the Police categorically refused to attend the incident. This is the fourth attack by Orthodox extremists in the city of Rustavi this year. To date, no one has been arrested or prosecuted although the identities of the perpetrators are well known to the Rustavi Police.
This latest case adds weight to the application filed on June 29, 2001 by Jehovahs Witnesses in the European Court of Human Rights over lack of action by the Police, Prosecutors Office, and Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia.
The BBC and Jehovah's Witnesses
BBC (07.08.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (08.08.2001) Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net
FX : Prayer in a Georgian Church
Narrator: Downtown Tbilisi, in one of Georgia's ancient cathedrals the prayer flows uninterrupted. In few meters from the church another service is about to start in the neighbouring mosque. Further down the road a synagogue opens its doors. There was time when in the region full of ethnic and religious tensions, this small area of Tbilisi was seen as a symbol of Georgia's renowned tolerance. But while three temples still stand next to each one, what they once stood for seems to have vanished in the chaos of post-soviet transition.
FX: More prayer, church sounds
Nrrator: In January of 2001 Georgia's Supreme Court annulled registration of the country's two Jehovah's Witnesses' organizations. According to the representative of one of this organizations, Levan Kopalia, this decision was not much of a surprise.
KOPALIA: (English) For the past years we have experienced persecution. Our organization is trying to take all lawful measures, we try to appeal in courts, we try to contact human rights groups. We never go for fighting. All we try to do is to protect our right. Our right to exist and to fulfil our religious rituals.
Narrator: Although the Georgian Constitution speaks of religious freedom, the priority here is openly given to Georgian orthodoxy, which for the past twenty centuries has been the country's dominant religion. However, it was not until ten years ago, when after seventy years of quiet existence under communist suppression the church found itself in a new role of a hugely popular and partially responsible for establishment of a post-soviet order institution. Member of the Parliament Koba Davitashvili explains:
KOBA: (Georgian/voiceover) Belonging to the Church has become fashionable. It does not mean however that people are true believers. But today many politicians in Georgia parade with the fact that they belong to the orthodox church, they don 't hide the fact that they often first of all defend the interests of the church in their decision making processes.
Narrator : But while being orthodox in Georgia has become trendy, belonging to any other religious group can be simply dangerous. For the past few years members of all religious minorities have suffered from regular assaults and attacks. Radical groups have broken into Baptist churches, and members of Pentecostal Church have suffered from violent attacks. But the main victims of this violence are Georgia's 15,000 Jehovah's witnesses. In May a house of one of the Jehovah's Witnesses was burned down, and in the Western city of Martvili a mob led by two Georgian priests attacked a meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses. Several Jehovah's Witnesses including children and women were beaten with iron and wooden crosses. Zviad Dzadzamia was there.
ZVIAD: (Georgian/voiceover)You know especially during the past couple of years our life has become very difficult and there is a lot of aggression directed at us. Personally I have often been stopped and assaulted in the streets. On the 30th of April, we were having a bible study in the house of one of our followers when a mob broke in. They rushed in with sticks, with iron crosses. It was a mob led by Father Basil, many women and children were beaten and I received a head injury.
Narrator: The man responsible for insighting many of these attacks is an excommunicated Georgian priest Basil Mkalavishvili. He makes no secret of his enthusiasm and determination of fighting what he calls satanic sects.
BASIL: (Georgian/voiceover) It is terrible, terrible that today Georgia is being invaded by dark satanic forces of the outside. Many do not understand that Georgia's salvation is in Orthodoxy, and that those sects, and especially Jehovah's witnesses are trying to destroy our centuries long tradition. This is why, I and my followers have declared a battle to those sects and we are determined to carry on fighting them.
Narrator: For years Mkalavishvili's actions have gone unchecked and despite clear evidence of his violent activities he had managed to avoid criminal charges. Human rights groups believe that it is Mkalavishvili's association with Georgia's security forces that allows him to get away.
Narrator: Basil Mkalavishvili himself does not deny his association with the police.
BASIL: (Georgian/voiceover) Thank God that among our security services and policemen here are people who are willing to help me: they realize how dangerous it is to have these sects in Georgia.
Narrator: Higher up the staircase of the state bureaucracy the officials remain equally indifferent -- regular appeals by non-governmental organizations and religious groups have been left unanswered. Dozens of complains have been dusting away on the shelves of Georgia's prosecutor's office. Giga Bokeria of the Liberty Institute explains why he thinks the government is so slow to respond.
Narrator: According to Bokeria, the situation has become worse since Georgia's last year's admission to the Council of Europe freed the government from the pressure of meeting western standards. During last couple of months other radical groups have been created to fight religious minorities. Among them is an organization Jvari, some members of which are priests of the Georgian Orthodox Church. The official position of the Church, however, remains neutral. One of the recent statements issued by the Patriarchy declared that the Church works within acceptable bounds of peaceful treatment. Within these bounds Orthodox Church and its supporters in the parliament are lobbying hard for adoption of a Law on Religion and signing of the Constitutional Agreement which will define the relationship between the Church and the State. Giga Bokeria:
GIGA: (English) If there is a political will, Georgian current legislation provides plenty of room for order, and we don 't need any law on religion to stop the violence. Both drafts of the documents we 've seen will simply turn Orthodoxy into a state religion which will further deepen the discrimination. The only thing we need right now which can really help is international pressure on the government.
Narrator: But while concerned human rights groups and religious minorities look for international attention and radical groups swing their crosses in the battle against Antichrist, the majority of the Georgian population remains largely undisturbed. In a country where electricity cuts can last for 18 hours a day and 8-dollar pensions are not paid for months, social conscience is not very high up on the priority list.
Narrator: In her small house in one of Tbilisi's most remote districts Manana Jumbadze is hosting a meeting of her fellow Jehovah Witnesses. There was time, she remembers, when religious services like this one were held in public places. But times have changed and Jehovah Witnesses throughout Georgia try to keep alow profile.
Manana: (Georgian/voice over) Many of my friends have problems with families and friends because they belong to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Fortunately my family understands me, but still, the overall public attitude toward us is very negative. I believe media is also responsible for that - they portray us in a completely different way, as if we present some sort of a danger.
FX: More Chant.
Narrator: As the rays of the setting sun make their way through a small window the chorus of voices fills the tiny room. On this earth God is preparing us for paradise, say the words of the Jehovah hymn, as if in an ironic reminder that their chances of finding the paradise in Georgia are becoming increasingly slim.
FX: More chant.
Will presidential meeting end religious violence?
by Felix Corley
Keston News Service (11.07.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (12.07.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Although promoting religious tolerance and ending the religious violence and attacks on minority religious communities were key themes of the 10 July meeting between seven religious leaders and President Eduard Shevardnadze, opinions are divided as to whether the meeting will help end the violence. `It won't end violence in itself,' Baptist Union leader Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili told Keston News Service on 11 July. `But if there is follow-up and the statements from the seven religious leaders are taken seriously it will contribute to an end to the violence. It is not the end of the violence but the beginning of the end of the violence.'
'The problem of violence won't be solved by one meeting,' Constantin Vardzelashvili of the Liberty Institute, a human rights group in Tbilisi which runs a special project to monitor violence against religious minorities, told Keston on 11 July. 'While there is no sign from the law enforcement agencies of any action being taken, I am rather pessimistic. We'll have to see what developments there are.'
Metropolitan Daniel (Datuashvili), who represented the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate at the meeting, believed the proposed new law on religion would end the violence, although he was more equivocal about who was responsible for the violence against religious minorities. He stressed that the violence did not come from the Patriarchate, but complained not only of those who cause `physical harm' but those who cause `moral harm' also. `The reaction of the extremists to these totalitarian religious sects is not justified, but it is in reaction to their very aggressive activities,' he told Keston on 11 July. He believed the meeting will hope to promote stability in the religious field by promoting a `proper legal base' for religious activity that will `stop all violations, from one side or the other'. `The leaders of the different religious groups issued a general declaration committing themselves to fighting together against violence and for peaceful coexistence.'
Most of the victims of violence at the hands of extremists have been Jehovah's Witnesses, although Pentecostals and Baptists have also been targeted.
Among recent incidents was a 17 June attack on a Jehovah's Witness meeting in Tbilisi - the 77th reported attack on Jehovah's Witnesses since October 1999. Some 50 male and female intruders - identified by the Jehovah's Witnesses as followers of the defrocked Orthodox priest Basil Mkalavishvili - broke into the meeting and savagely beat those present and vandalised the home where the meeting was taking place, breaking furniture and windows and setting fire to religious objects before fleeing. Two of the victims were seriously injured in the attack, police said, adding that an investigation had been launched.
The Jehovah's Witness spokesman in Georgia, Christian Presber, asked by Keston on 11 July if he thought the meeting with the president would help end the violence, was not optimistic: 'There have been such condemnations before', he said, 'but the violence has not stopped. Mkalavishvili and other extremists will only stop when one of the perpetrators of the violence has been prosecuted. Nothing else will stop them.'
Also attacked and broken up by thugs was a 13 June evangelistic meeting, organised by the Pentecostal Word of Life Church in the western city of Zugdidi, which was being addressed by a visiting Swedish pastor.
Pastor Gary Azikov, the Lutheran secretary, told Keston from Tbilisi on 10 July that the situation has recently been `a little quieter', with fewer attacks on religious minorities. However, Bishop Songulashvili characterised the situation as `the quiet before the storm'.
The Council of Europe, which Georgia joined in April 1999, has long been pressuring the Georgian authorities to stamp out such violence and prosecute the perpetrators. The head of the Council of Europe has told the Georgian government the Jehovah's Witnesses must be better protected. `Jehovah's Witnesses deserve the same protection of their personal physical integrity as everyone else in Georgia,' the council's Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer told reporters on 6 July at the end of a two-day visit to the country.
On 29 June, the Jehovah's Witnesses filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, citing the government's failure to punish the perpetrators of the attacks. The application asks the Court to rule that the government of Georgia must prosecute perpetrators of the 17 October 1999 attack on the Jehovah's Witness congregation in the Tbilisi suburb of Gldani by Mkalavishvili and his followers which started off the series of attacks.
Religious leaders meet Shevardnadze
by Felix Corley
Keston News Service (11.07. 2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (12.07.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - In what one participant described as `a unique meeting', Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze spent two hours yesterday evening (10 July) with religious leaders discussing religious freedom and how to overcome the religious violence that has racked the country for more than a year. `The meeting took place at the president's invitation,' the Baptist Union leader Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili told Keston News Service from Tbilisi on 11 July, `and was the first time the leaders of the country's seven main faiths met together with the president.' Metropolitan Daniel (Datuashvili), who represented the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate at the meeting, also said it had been positive. `There is a real basis for dialogue between the religions that exist in Georgia,' he told Keston on 11 July.
Attending the meeting were Metropolitan Daniel, Archbishop of Sukhumi and head of the Patriarchate's mission and evangelisation department, Bishop Giuseppe Pasotto of the Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Gert Hummel of the Lutheran Church, Baptist Bishop Songulashvili, Archbishop Kevork Seraydarian of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Muslim leader Ali Ahund and deputy chief rabbi of the Jewish community, Alexander Rosenblat.
The religious leaders presented three petitions to the president. The first, signed by all seven faiths, called for a law on freedom of conscience (Georgia is the only post-Soviet republic without a specific law on religion). `Such a law is badly needed to safeguard the religious rights of citizens,' declared Bishop Songulashvili, who presented the petitions on behalf of the religious leaders. `All seven faiths represented at the meeting will now work together in helping to draw up the text,' Metropolitan Daniel told Keston.
The second - described as a `peace paper' and also signed by all seven faiths - called for religious peace and tolerance both within Georgia and in the Caucasus region.
The third - signed only by the Orthodox, the Catholics, the Lutherans and the Baptists - called on the president to facilitate a law governing procedures for how religious communities, and other non-religious bodies, can engage in humanitarian aid work, as no such law yet exists. `The churches told the president they had the feeling that their humanitarian work was tolerated but not welcome,' Bishop Songulashvili reported. `We asked the president to promote the law-making process to clarify the rights and responsibilities of religious organisations in conducting such humanitarian work.' Metropolitan Daniel believes the meeting will help facilitate church input into the planned legislation. `The wishes of religious groups will now be taken into account in considering the draft of this law.' (The Armenians, the Muslims and the Jews did not sign as they do not engage in humanitarian aid work.)
Shevardnadze indicated that he was aware of international concern over the religious violence in Georgia. `It is not the extremists who will be held responsible for the religious violence,' he told the religious leaders, `but the Georgian nation.' He told them he believes religious believers of different faiths can work harmoniously together for the benefit of the country. `I think common sense will prevail,' he declared. He called on the leaders to participate in the life of the country to help overcome expressions of violence. He argued that the root of the religious violence was people's poverty, allowing them to be easily manipulated by extremists, whether religious or political.
Shevardnadze promised to hold further meetings with the religious leaders. `I know you have far more concerns than those presented here,' he told them, `but I hope in future we will be able to discuss these issues.'
Not invited to the meeting were leaders of the Pentecostal Church or the Jehovah's Witnesses (who claim some 12,000 members in Georgia), or any leaders of the country's less numerous faiths. `I know nothing about the meeting,' Bishop Oleg Khubashvili, the head of the Pentecostal Union, told Keston from Tbilisi on 11 July. `No-one has informed me about it.'
`Only the leaders of religious confessions that have a special influence or played a role in the history of Georgia were invited,' Metropolitan Daniel told Keston.
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Will presidential meeting end religious violence?
by Felix Corley
Keston News Service (11.07.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (12.07.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Although promoting religious tolerance and ending the religious violence and attacks on minority religious communities were key themes of the 10 July meeting between seven religious leaders and President Eduard Shevardnadze, opinions are divided as to whether the meeting will help end the violence. `It won't end violence in itself,' Baptist Union leader Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili told Keston News Service on 11 July. `But if there is follow-up and the statements from the seven religious leaders are taken seriously it will contribute to an end to the violence. It is not the end of the violence but the beginning of the end of the violence.'
'The problem of violence won't be solved by one meeting,' Constantin Vardzelashvili of the Liberty Institute, a human rights group in Tbilisi which runs a special project to monitor violence against religious minorities, told Keston on 11 July. 'While there is no sign from the law enforcement agencies of any action being taken, I am rather pessimistic. We'll have to see what developments there are.'
Metropolitan Daniel (Datuashvili), who represented the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate at the meeting, believed the proposed new law on religion would end the violence, although he was more equivocal about who was responsible for the violence against religious minorities. He stressed that the violence did not come from the Patriarchate, but complained not only of those who cause `physical harm' but those who cause `moral harm' also. `The reaction of the extremists to these totalitarian religious sects is not justified, but it is in reaction to their very aggressive activities,' he told Keston on 11 July. He believed the meeting will hope to promote stability in the religious field by promoting a `proper legal base' for religious activity that will `stop all violations, from one side or the other'. `The leaders of the different religious groups issued a general declaration committing themselves to fighting together against violence and for peaceful coexistence.'
Most of the victims of violence at the hands of extremists have been Jehovah's Witnesses, although Pentecostals and Baptists have also been targeted.
Among recent incidents was a 17 June attack on a Jehovah's Witness meeting in Tbilisi - the 77th reported attack on Jehovah's Witnesses since October 1999. Some 50 male and female intruders - identified by the Jehovah's Witnesses as followers of the defrocked Orthodox priest Basil Mkalavishvili - broke into the meeting and savagely beat those present and vandalised the home where the meeting was taking place, breaking furniture and windows and setting fire to religious objects before fleeing. Two of the victims were seriously injured in the attack, police said, adding that an investigation had been launched.
The Jehovah's Witness spokesman in Georgia, Christian Presber, asked by Keston on 11 July if he thought the meeting with the president would help end the violence, was not optimistic: 'There have been such condemnations before', he said, 'but the violence has not stopped. Mkalavishvili and other extremists will only stop when one of the perpetrators of the violence has been prosecuted. Nothing else will stop them.'
Also attacked and broken up by thugs was a 13 June evangelistic meeting, organised by the Pentecostal Word of Life Church in the western city of Zugdidi, which was being addressed by a visiting Swedish pastor.
Pastor Gary Azikov, the Lutheran secretary, told Keston from Tbilisi on 10 July that the situation has recently been `a little quieter', with fewer attacks on religious minorities. However, Bishop Songulashvili characterised the situation as `the quiet before the storm'.
The Council of Europe, which Georgia joined in April 1999, has long been pressuring the Georgian authorities to stamp out such violence and prosecute the perpetrators. The head of the Council of Europe has told the Georgian government the Jehovah's Witnesses must be better protected. `Jehovah's Witnesses deserve the same protection of their personal physical integrity as everyone else in Georgia,' the council's Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer told reporters on 6 July at the end of a two-day visit to the country.
On 29 June, the Jehovah's Witnesses filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, citing the government's failure to punish the perpetrators of the attacks. The application asks the Court to rule that the government of Georgia must prosecute perpetrators of the 17 October 1999 attack on the Jehovah's Witness congregation in the Tbilisi suburb of Gldani by Mkalavishvili and his followers which started off the series of attacks.
Council of Europe backs Georgia Jehovahs Witnesses
Reuters (06.07.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (09.07.2001) C Website : http : //www.hrwf.net- Email : info@hrwf.net - The head of the Council of Europe on Friday said Jehovah's Witnesses in Georgia who complain of persecution at the hands of Orthodox extremists must be better protected.
Georgian police have been accused of turning a blind eye to attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the overwhelmingly Orthodox former Soviet republic. "Jehovah's Witnesses deserve the same protection of their personal physical integrity as everyone else in Georgia," the council's Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Georgia.
"It must be made very clear to the police that they are obliged to protect them when they are under attack." Jehovah's Witnesses say they have been attacked on more than 77 occasions in the last 18 months, sometimes by men armed with nail-studded clubs.
On Thursday, a London-based spokesman for the faith said Georgian prosecutors had failed to act on more than 300 complaints filed by Jehovah's Witnesses, and followers had taken their case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The Strasbourg-based court falls under the auspices of the Council of Europe, a 43-member pan-European rights watchdog.
Schwimmer said the council had offered its assistance in the drafting of an agreement between Georgia's powerful Orthodox church and the state. He warned that the creation of any "state church" would violate the rights of Georgians to freedom of religion.
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Jehovahs Witnesses file with European Court
JW Public Affairs Office/ HRWF International Secretariat (29.06.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - After almost two years of inaction and lack of prosecution on the part of the Georgias Prosecutors office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Jehovahs Witnesses filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights.
The application asks the Court to rule that the government of Georgia must prosecute perpetrators of the brutal October 17, 1999 attack on the Gldani congregation of Jehovahs Witnesses by defrocked Orthodox priest Vasili Mkalavishvili and his followers.
More than 70 similar attacks have been carried out against Jehovahs Witnesses since the Gldani mobbing, the most recent occurring on June 17, 2001.
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Government, church to sign controversial concordat
By Jean-Christophe Peuch
RFE/RL (16.05.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (19.06.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Georgia, leaders of the Autocephalous (independent and self-governing) Orthodox Church are lobbying secular authorities for legislation that would grant it special status. The Church's Patriarchate is particularly anxious to sign a controversial document that would regulate relations between the state and the church. But Georgian liberal politicians, human rights activists and religious minority groups fear that the so-called "concordat" might pose a threat to religious freedom. RFE/RL correspondent Jean-Christophe Peuch reports form Tbilisi.
Ever since Georgia acceded to independence in 1991, its Orthodox Church has been lobbying parliament and the government for legislation that would grant it special status.
Chief among the proposed laws is a controversial document that, from the Orthodox clergy's point of view, would regulate relations between the Patriarchate and the government, giving the church a greater say in the country's overall spiritual affairs.
The document has been under consideration in Georgia for at least five years. It is known as a "concordat" -- even though that term usually designates an accord reached between the Vatican and a government to settle the Roman Catholic Church's status in individual nations.
Several blueprints of the concordat have been drafted, with a final version having recently been transmitted to parliament.
The concordat is expected to be signed later this year despite strong opposition from liberals, who fear it could jeopardize democratic reforms begun 10 years ago. Amendments to the constitution will be necessary before the document can become law.
Some analysts say the concordat is backed by politicians who are seeking to exploit nationalist leanings and back the views of the Church as a means of winning votes.
Controversy over the concordat has been fuelled by recent violent attacks carried out by Orthodox hard-liners against religious minority groups such as Baptists or the Jehovah's Witnesses. Among Orthodox extremists is a group of some 100 led by Vasili Mkalavishvili, a defrocked priest also known as Father Vasili.
Although the Orthodox Patriarchate has never endorsed the use of violence, it has only half-heartedly condemned the perpetrators of these attacks.
The latest incident took place on 12 May, when a mob of extremists reportedly affiliated to Vasili's group burned down the home of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Tbilisi's Samgori district. Father Vasili has denied any responsibility for the incident.
Human rights groups and religious minorities blame the government for tacitly encouraging the attacks through its inaction. They say on many occasions the police have failed to prevent the attacks and that none of the perpetrators has ever been brought to justice.
Levan Berdzenishvili is the general director of Georgia's national library and also runs a non-governmental organization known as the Civic Development International Center. Berdzenishvili says that the Orthodox Church's strong hostility toward other faiths is due in no small part to its inability to adapt to the new environment that emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union and to compete -- both spiritually and financially -- with "non-traditional" religious groups.
He also notes that since 1991 there has been a gradual rapprochement between secular and ecclesiastical authorities.
"Former communist officials declared themselves Christians and started interfering zealously in the country's religious affairs. Nobody believes in their conversion, but it was a boost for the Orthodox Church, which saw new opportunities to move closer to the [secular] authorities. And now the Church is trying to use these same authorities to solve its problems."
Berdzenishvili was apparently referring to President Eduard Shevardnadze, a former Soviet Communist Party official who was baptized and christened "Giorgi" shortly after he took power in 1992. Shevardnadze is widely believed to have close ties with the Patriarchate.
The Orthodox Church hopes that the concordat will secure the return of properties that currently belong to the state that it says were taken away from the church under Soviet rule.
Religious minorities have also been unable to regain ownership rights to properties confiscated after the 1921 Bolshevik takeover. They complain that, in the absence of proper legislation, they are unable to acquire property.
But non-Orthodox religious groups and liberal intellectuals believe that, beyond the property issue, the concordat will offer the Patriarchate unprecedented privileges that they say could prove detrimental to other denominations.
Although the 1995 Georgian Constitution states that all religions are equal in rights, it nevertheless emphasizes the special role the Georgian Orthodox Church has played in the country's history.
The overwhelming majority of ethnic Georgians, who represent approximately 70 percent of the country's five-million-strong population, nominally associate themselves with the Georgian Orthodox Church.
Besides the Jehovah's Witnesses and Protestant denominations, Georgia's religious minorities include Muslims, Roman Catholics, followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Jews, Russian Orthodox, and a small number of dissident religious groups of Russian origin loosely connected with Orthodoxy.
All these faiths have been represented in Georgia for centuries, but the Patriarchate regards most of them as unwanted newcomers.
In an interview with our correspondent, historian Giorgi Mamulia said one of the basic ideas of the concordat is that Georgia's current Eastern-oriented Orthodoxy should be considered the country's "national religion." This, he argues, is "historical nonsense."
Mamulia notes that, for centuries after the 1054 Schism between Rome and Byzantium, the Georgian Orthodox Church always felt spiritually and dogmatically closer to Rome. Only in the 16th century did Georgia begin looking toward Russia as a potential ally against the Ottomans and the Safavid Persians.
Ten years after Russia conquered eastern Georgia in 1801, the Georgian Church lost its independence and came under the rule of the Russian Patriarchate. The autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church was restored only in 1943 by Stalin.
Mamulia questions the notion that Georgia's clergy has always looked towards Byzantium and Moscow:
"Georgia has never been Orthodox in the Byzantine -- even less in the Russian -- understanding of the word. Up until the Schism between Rome and Byzantium, Orthodoxy had been understood in Georgia in the Western sense of the word. From 1054 through the 16th century, it is clear that Georgia was close to Western Christianity, especially to Rome. Only geopolitical factors forced us to move toward the Russian Orthodox Church. This was not the result of any political or church tradition. On the contrary, we stepped away from our traditions."
Mamulia thinks the concordat -- which he says is supported by nationalist parties and pro-Russian politicians alike -- is an attempt to create a "Russian Orthodox-type theocracy" that will eventually keep Georgia in Moscow's orbit.
Earlier this week (14 May), Shevardnadze said the document, which the government has pledged to submit to the Council of Europe, will not infringe on the rights of other religions.
But representatives of non-Orthodox religions see the concordat as a potential threat. Bishop Oleg Khubashuli, the leader of Georgia's Pentecostal Church, expressed his concerns to RFE/RL: "We believe that [the concordat] will undermine the rights of religious minority groups. It is not acceptable that a state should favor one religion over the others. All religions should be equal in rights. We do not question the fact that Georgia has long felt itself an Orthodox country. Nevertheless we think that [the concordat] is unacceptable because, under its terms, Orthodoxy will be taught in schools that are attended by our children."
Two years ago, human rights groups reported that, under the pressure of the Patriarchate, the Education Ministry had prevented the use of school textbooks on the history of religions because they did not give absolute precedence to Orthodox Christianity.
National Library director Berdzenishvili is sympathetic to minority groups' concerns about the concordat, but he says that its threat should not be overestimated: "I too think this is a threat. But only on paper. Because what the Orthodox Church really cares about is property, financial operations. I am sorry to say this, but this is the truth. It is a pity that the aspirations of the Orthodox Church have turned so materialistic, but [it] really doesn't need anything else."
But historian Mamulia argues that the proposed document could jeopardize Georgia's social stability: "Religion should serve as an assimilating, as a [consolidating] factor. But the way it is presented [in the concordat] will lead to a deep-rooted schism based on national and religious motivations. Given that Georgia is a multiethnic state and that 30 percent of its population is made of non-ethnic Georgians, I don't think this is the best way to [consolidate] our nation."
Four years ago, the Georgian Patriarchate withdrew from the World Council of Churches, an organization set up in 1938 to promote dialogue among Christian churches.
Mamulia thinks that, instead of moving toward further isolation, the Georgian Orthodox Church should look for ways to improve ties with Western religious denominations. He says that this would help Georgia's leadership "modernize" the country and keep it away from Russia's influence.
Police refuse to quell violent attack
JW Office of Public Information (18.06.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (19.06.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net "If we had known that this was an attack on you people we would not have bothered to come." That was the response from two police officers who arrived at the scene of the latest violent attack against Jehovahs Witnesses, according to eyewitnesses, Ilo Robakidze and Giorgi Kiknavelidze.
At 11.45 on Sunday, June 17, eighty-six members of the Ortachala congregation of Jehovahs Witnesses in Tbilisi experienced a brutal attack by a mob estimated at around 50 or 60 men and women. Victims identified Petre (Gia) Ivanidze, Nodar Aslanashvili, Vakhtang Dadunadze, Mamuka Kartozia and Zura Lomtatidze known followers of defrocked priest Vasili Mkalavishvili who have participated in several such attacks in the past.
The mob gained entry to the private home where the religious meeting was held by smashing down the front door and breaking windows. Several items of furniture, personal belongings, and hundreds of pieces of Bible literature were seized and burned outside. Women were ordered to remove their shoes. The attackers then stole the shoes, along with money and other valuables. Children ran screaming for cover as they watched their fathers being beaten with wooden clubs. One woman had her dress ripped by an attacker who then threatened to strip her and parade her naked in the street. Giorgi Kiknavelidze, along with a number of others, required medical treatment for bleeding and bruising after being severely beaten. Nana Robakidze, a mother of three, was badly shaken as she tried to protect her three-year-old daughter, Tamuna, who suffers from a heart defect.
This is the 77th recorded criminal attack since the campaign of violence against Jehovahs Witnesses started in October 1999. Since then 314 criminal complaints have been filed, but no charges have been laid against any individual for the ongoing reign of terror. The General Prosecutor and the Ministry of Internal Affairs have failed to act against those committing these crimes. Todays reaction by the police adds weight to the argument that the wave of persecution only continues because of the inaction of government law enforcement agencies.
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Attacks led by Orthodox priests continue
www.jw-georgia.org (11.06.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (13.06.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net Email: info@hrwf.net A mob of 30 led by two Orthodox priests, Gocha Tsaava and Giorgi Basilaia, attacked a meeting of Jehovahs Witnesses in the western Georgian City of Martvili, on Friday, 8 June 2001. The mob assaulted two women, beating one with a stick and striking the other in the face while the priests looked on. These same priests attempted to force another woman to kiss a cross. Police attended the scene, but refused to intervene. This is the sixth attack on Jehovahs Witnesses led by official Orthodox priests this year, and comes the same day as Dilis gazeti printed a statement by the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Georgia, "that the Georgian Church works within those bounds that are acceptable to the Orthodox Church, which is peaceful treatment."
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Relentless terror campaign by Orthodox extremists
Watch Tower Georgia (21.05.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (22.05.2001)- Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - In what is becoming a weekly ritual of violence, at around 5 p.m. on Sunday a cowardly mob of 30 Orthodox extremists, known followers of priest Vasili Mkalavishvili forced their way into an apartment in the Mukhiani region of Tbilisi where a meeting of about 60 Jehovahs Witnesses was being held. The attackers viciously assaulted men and women, one of whom is pregnant, wielding clubs and ransacking the apartment in the process. Victims suffered multiple bruising including facial and head injuries.
Police were called immediately and arrived shortly thereafter armed with automatic weapons. They pursued the attackers, even firing their weapons in the air, before eventually capturing three of them. However, eyewitnesses reported that the attackers were released after the police identified them and took statements.
Government ministries and the police have consistently demonstrated either an unwillingness, or inability, to punish Orthodox extremists. Inertia on the part of the authorities emboldens the perpetrators who have violently attacked individuals and congregations of Jehovahs Witnesses with impunity since October 1999.
There is now an established pattern to the violence. On Sunday, 13 May, as reported in the Caucasus Press newspaper Dilis, in the Samgori region of Tbilisi, religious extremists burned down a home belonging to a Kurdish family of Jehovahs Witnesses. The eleven occupants narrowly escaped death.
Last week Kavkasia television broadcasted this chilling statement by Orthodox priest Vasili Mkalavishvili: "I am gravely warning all of Georgia and the population, especially the representatives of the sect of the Jehovists, not to gather together and not to hold their satanic meetings. "I am gravely warning all of Georgia and the population, especially the representatives of the sect of the Jehovists, not to gather together and not to hold their satanic meetings. Although I am forbidden to go to them, my parishioners will come and after today their terrible pogroms will begin."
In March 2001 the Georgian Supreme Court issued a press statement regarding the 13,000 Jehovahs Witnesses in Georgia in which it confirmed "their right to have peaceful meetings" and "their right of association with others."
Private home is burned with family still inside
Watch Tower Georgia (16.05.2001) HRWF International Secretariat (17.05.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Early Sunday morning, May 13, at about 2:30, Vladimir Shamoyans family was rudely awakened by the smell of smoke and the commotion outside. Someone had doused their home with fuel and then set it ablaze. Ten managed to get out but then realized that 21-year-old stepson Dato Mstoian was missing.
"We hardly came out through the smoke with our small children, when we realized that my son Dato was not with us" said the mother, Gulnara Shamoyan, still in shock. "Minutes later the house was engulfed in flames." Meanwhile Dato was awakened and tried to escape but could see only flames outside his bedroom door. He said a quick prayer and then jumped to safety from his second-story window.
As horrible as the incident was, Vladimir Shamoyan and his family are not strangers to such acts of inhumanity. In fact, over a month ago they heard threats that their property would be destroyed if they did not discontinue their worship. Located in the Samgori district of Tbilisi, their home regularly served as a meeting place for the local community of Jehovahs Witnesses. Living in a country where religious freedom in theory exists but where in practice intolerance is condoned, the past two years have brought repeated mob actions, property damage, lootings and cruel physical abuse against those who dare to profess a faith other than Orthodoxy.
Last month defrocked Orthodox priest Vasili Mkavalishvili, who has openly orchestrated previous acts of mob violence, declared on public television: "I am gravely warning all of Georgia and the population, especially the representatives of the sect of the Jehovists, not to gather together and not to hold their satanic meetings. Although I am forbidden to go to them my parishioners will come, and after today their terrible pogroms will begin."
Vasili refers to a legal document he signed restricting his movement to Tbilisi and agreeing not to interfere with meetings of Jehovahs Witnesses any further. "This has not stopped the violence," Christian Presber, local spokesman for Jehovahs Witnesses, said of the restraining order. "This is the 64th attack on Jehovahs Witnesses, some of them very large disruptions, and all with impunity. Vasili openly proclaims that he informs the government security and the government ministries each time he is going to lead an attack, but no action is ever taken to prevent him."
A trail of ashes leading to the street indicates that the fire was started intentionally. The fire department has initiated an investigation into this latest of a series of unpunished violent acts.
Levan Ramishvili, director of the Institute of Liberty operating out of Tbilisi, said in an exclusive interview: "We face a crisis. Like in Nazi Germany in the 30s and late 20s, we have a similar situation."
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Masked men beat women and children with clubs
as Georgian Member of Parliament watches
www.jw-georgia.org (02.05.2001) / HRWF International Secretariat (03.05.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - On 30 April 2001, in the Svanetizubani district of Tbilisi, men, women and children were attacked during a peaceful religious meeting by a mob of Orthodox extremists wielding clubs studded with nails. According to eyewitnesses, a Member of Parliament, Jemal Gamakharia, was present during the attack.
"Those in attendance were violently dragged outside and beaten. I saw Tamaz Nachkebia attacked so viciously that he received a concussion and required five stitches to a deep gash on the head," stated Zviad Dzadzamia, who also suffered injuries. According to Dzadzamia, Member of Parliament Jemal Gamakharia told victims, "You received what you deserve, and the worse is yet to come."
The mob, followers of defrocked priest Vasili Mkalavishvili, also ransacked the home where the meeting was taking place, destroying all furniture, electrical equipment, and breaking all windows. Religious literature and benches were taken outside and burned in a large bonfire. Police arrived after the mob fled and blamed the victims for holding religious meetings. This was the second attack on the same congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses in the last few weeks.
A member of the mob, Lia Akhalkatsi, who has participated in previous attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses, filmed the attack. Other members of the mob wore masks to hide their identity. However, some of these masks came off during the attack, and attackers were easily identified as members of Mkalavishvili's mob.
In an interview published on 5 April 2001, Member of Parliament Koba Davitashvili discussed why attacks by Mkalavishvili's mob are continuing. He stated that the Police and other government agencies "have implemented the syndrome of 'non-punishability,' a syndrome which creates the basis for the appearance of 'Vasilis.'
The campaign of violent attacks was prompted by the 1999 attack in the Gldani district by the same mob of Orthodox extremists. To this day none of the perpetrators of any attack, though their identities are well known, have been brought to justice.
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Mob violence escalates
Watch Tower (30.04.2001) / HRWF International Secretariat (02.05.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - On 29 April 2001, there were three new attacks as Orthodox religious extremists continue to terrorize Jehovah's Witnesses. The attacks took place in Rustavi, Tbilisi and Poti. In two of these attacks, police refused to act.
In Rustavi, "at approximately 10:15 a.m., a mob of 15 men tried to break down the door of the apartment where we were holding a religious meeting," stated Ilia Eterishvili, who presided at the meeting. "Everyone escaped through the window, but the mob followed us onto the street, assaulted me, punching and kicking me as I fell to the ground, and stole personal belongings of several others. The police refused to accept our complaints." This is the third such attack in Rustavi over the last five weeks.
In the Mukhiani district of Tbilisi, a mob of twenty men thought to be followers of defrocked priest, Vasili Mkalavishvili, broke into the home of Nugzar Butkhuzi, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, while the family was absent and ransacked the contents of the house and burned the family's religious literature on the street. "The police were called, but when they arrived they were drunk and simply stated that the family had gotten what they deserved," stated Mr. Butkhuzi.
In Poti, the police intervened to prevent a mob of 40 followers of Mkalavishvili from attacking two different meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses. However, no one in the mob was arrested.
A recent public statement by the Supreme Court and a parliamentary resolution condemned religious extremism and called on law-enforcement agencies to take measures to end the violence.
"It is high time for Georgia to take steps to stop these attacks," stated local attorney, Mamuka Chabashvili. "The inaction of law enforcement officials is contributing to the escalating violence. This is a question that is presently before the courts of Georgia and if this produces no results, there will be no option but to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights for relief."
U.S. pastor sustains injuries in Tbilisi mob assault
WRNS (06.04.2001) HRWF International Secretariat (24.04.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Labeled as Satanists and beaten for close to 10 minutes by a mob of angry locals, nine Assembly of God pastors experienced religious persecution firsthand on March 24. Ironically, the attack was reportedly instigated by an Orthodox priest.
"I want people to know what is going on in other parts of the world and ask Christians to pray," says Rev. B.G. Nevitt, pastor of Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Decatur, Illinois. "This happens to believers over there all the time."
During the assault, Nevitt sustained a broken finger on his left hand and numerous bruises, which left him with radiating pain in his arms, back and neck. Other pastors - from Ohio, Montana, Wisconsin, and elsewhere - were not as seriously injured.
Father Basili Mkalavishvili, a defrocked Georgian Orthodox priest, reportedly led the mob. According to the Associated Press, Mkalavishvili is well-known to human rights groups for attacking religious minorities in a nation that is 65 percent Georgian Orthodox. He was expelled from his church six years ago for opposing its ecumenical activities.
"But," says Nevitt, "I didn't see any Orthodox leaders condemning Mkalavishvili's actions either." He mentioned that Mkalavishvili still wears his priestly garments and a cross around his neck. Why would a priest attack a fellow believer? "Anything that is not of the true and pure Orthodox faith, he condemns as satanic," Nevitt says.
Indeed, Amnesty International reports that followers of Mkalavishvili, "who is radically opposed to the newer non-Orthodox Christian faiths, have demonstrated publicly carrying posters saying 'Orthodoxy or Death.'"
Georgia's Orthodox church leaders have complained they are struggling to retain members because many foreign religious groups have entered Georgia since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Georgia, a nation of approximately 5 million people located between Russia and Turkey, celebrates its 10th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union this month.
Nevitt and the other U.S. pastors were conducting a church leaders' conference for Georgian believers March 22-23. On Friday the 23rd, a group of Mkalavishvili's followers tried to push their way into the conference to disrupt it. Nevitt says in the past, the group has "broken into services and meetings and drug people out in the streets. They've beaten them and burned all the literature and materials that they've had."
The local Christians, "knowing that this is a constant threat, had people positioned at doorways and windows to watch for anyone who might try to break in, and they barred the doors," says Nevitt. "Believers have this drill so down pat, there was no wondering what we should do. They immediately scooped up the children and put them into hiding. They gathered up the Bibles and immediately boxed them and threw them into a safe keeping place.
"I was so impressed by their knowledge of what to do, but saddened by the fact that they had to be so good at it," Nevitt adds.
What happened next, according to Nevitt, was a lot of shouting and intimidation while the mob of people tried to force their way in. When they couldn't enter, they damaged some vehicles that were outside. They also posted notices on the vehicles and on the doors to the building, "giving strict warning never to meet again," says Nevitt. The group threatened to come back later in the day with an even larger mob. They did not.
On Saturday, the pastors visited a property they helped to buy in hopes of establishing a Bible training center and humanitarian aid center. "We were on the property maybe 10 minutes," says Nevitt. "Then a car pulled up behind us, honked its horn, and Mkalavishvili and some of his strong men got out. They rang a bell and in the next instant there were 100 or better people there. And before I knew it, I was on the ground, and they were beating us with rocks, sticks, clubs and fists, and they were stomping on us. They pulled my hair, they spit on us, they picked me up by my belt and pulled me up and slammed me to the ground again and again." Nevitt adds that the attackers stole more than $3,500 worth of cameras and other equipment.
Nevitt says he could not understand the language being spoken by the mob, but one word that kept being repeated over and over was "Satan" or "Satanists," according to local translators.
According to Nevitt, the local police stationed directly across the street saw what happened but they turned their heads in the other direction. Nevitt says this is common: "I don't know how many unreported incidents there have been, but I know of at least seven other major incidents along this line with police reports being filed. And absolutely nothing has been done to arrest this man or do anything about this situation."
Nevitt continues, "When I got back, I did hear from an official with the Georgian government. He promised he would do everything in his power to see that some kind of justice is done." But, Nevitt says, he has doubts. "Nothing has ever been done to this man so far. In fact, it is rumored that Mkalavishvili has ties with some high government officials and backing by intelligence agencies such as the KGB."
The mob, says Nevitt, "had to be organized to some degree. We were at this property so brief a period of time, for them to know that we were there,to have this group organized, to have them situated in such a way to ambush the pastors, they knew what was going on."
Mkalavishvili's group burned books printed for Jehovah's Witness members earlier this month and burned tons of Baptist literature in a separate incident, an Associated Press report said. Jehovah's Witness adherents also mentioned that police were nearby but did not interfere when their books were burned.
According to Amnesty International, in a separate incident, Tbilisi police faced criticism for allegedly failing to respond when followers of Mkalavishvili assaulted members of a Jehovah's Witness congregation. Extracts from a video of the attack were shown on Georgian television, prompting widespread condemnation, even from President Eduard Shevardnadze who called for the attackers to be charged. But to Amnesty International's knowledge, Mkalavishvili has evaded being charged or prosecuted for that incident andfor attacks on Pentecostal believers.
"If someone is prosecuted in this case, it will only be because they attacked Americans," says Nevitt. "If Georgians had been beaten, nobody would have done a thing." Nevitt says that Georgian Christians often face grave persecution. "I was told that if the mob had seen my Georgian interpreter with us, they would have killed him."
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Campaign of terror against Jehovahs Witnesses in Rustavi continues
www.jw-georgia.org (09.04.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (23.04.2001)- Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Saturday, 7 April 2001, a mob of 20 men led by Paata Bluashvili, assistant director of the Rustavi marketplace Istanbul, attacked a meeting of Jehovahs Witnesses. The mob ransacked the apartment where the meeting was being held, destroying equipment and looting literature and personal belongings. Neighbors who tried to intervene on behalf of Jehovahs Witnesses were beaten. The mob then turned on the Witnesses and assaulted them. Upon exiting the building, they made a bonfire, burning the religious literature they had made off with.
This is the second time in less than two weeks that Paata Bluashvili has led an attack against Jehovahs Witnesses in Rustavi. This time he personally participated in assaulting others. The mob responsible is made up of members of the "Cross" organization, an ultra-Orthodox extremist group, led by Bluashvili. Government officials have been notified so that appropriate measures can be taken against those responsible.
"This mob has been terrorizing us for the last month and a half," stated Kviria Ardoteli, a victim in the attack who suffered injuries to the face. "When we went to the Police after this attack, they claimed we are violating public order by meeting together in our own homes."
"This is not simply a matter of petty criminal activity," said John Burns, international human rights specialist. "This mob is dangerous. It is only a question of time before they seriously injure or kill someone."
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Georgian Orthodox Church given
special role in society
Interfax News Agency (30.03.2001) HRWF International Secretariat (06.04.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The Georgian parliament at a plenary session on Friday passed a bill on entering amendments in the national constitution giving the Orthodox Church a special role to play in society. In accordance with the endorsed amendments, the Church is independent from the state and deals with it on the basis of an appropriate accord.
The Georgian president's parliamentary secretary Dzhony Khetsuriani has said the amendments do not mean that Orthodox Christianity has been declared a national religion in Georgia even though lots of countries, European among them, could be cited on this score.
He said the amendments concerning the Georgian Orthodox Church's status do not infringe on human rights in the country in any way and meet all international provisions and norms in the field of human rights and freedoms.
Once this bill had been passed, the parliament began to debate the issue of religious extremism, which has become an embarrassing problem for Georgia in recent time. This concerns unlawful actions by priest Vasil Mklavishvili excommunicated from the Georgian Orthodox Church and about 1,000 of his followers, regularly raiding the congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses, Baptists, Evangelists, and other believers.
The parliament adopted a ruling condemning the manifestations of any religious violence and instructed the law enforcement agencies to apply the strictest measures to religious extremists.
Meanwhile, as the parliament debated the religious extremism issue, Mklavishvili was summoned to the prosecutor's office in Tbilisi for questioning on Friday. He was charged on seven concrete facts of beating sect members and burning their literature in public. Until now, Georgian police and the prosecutor's office had turned a blind eye to actions by the former clergyman and his followers, which have been going on for almost two years.
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Minorities concerned over Orthodox concordat
by Aleksandr Shchipkov,
Keston News Service (04.04.2001) HRWF International Secretariat (05.04.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Some of Georgia's minority faiths have expressed their concerns about a constitutional amendment adopted by parliament on 30 March establishing relations between the state and the Orthodox Church on the basis of a concordat. The parliamentary move, which was approved with 188 deputies in favour and none against, will lead to the adoption of a concordat to govern relations between the state and the Orthodox Church currently being drawn up by a group of deputies and officials of the Orthodox Patriarchate. Despite pledges by President Eduard Shevardnadze on 2 April in his weekly radio interview that the constitutional amendment and the concordat would not harm the religious liberty of non-Orthodox citizens, some other faiths remain concerned, and plan to discuss their concerns at a forthcoming meeting with the president.
Shevardnadze emphasised that `the rights of other religious organisations and of atheists' would not be affected. `This law does not mean that any religion will be oppressed or treated as inferior,' he declared. `This would contradict the aspiration of our constitution and the principles on which the formation of our state is based.' The president noted that `representatives' of the Armenian Church, the Catholic Church, Judaism and Islam reacted to the amendment of the Constitution `with understanding'.
The draft agreement regulates relations between the Church and the State and covers areas including the army, prisons, hospitals, education, social welfare, marriage, property relations and church finances.
Some of the provisions are: the Church fulfils its functions on the basis of the norms of canon law within the framework of the agreement and Georgian legislation; clergy are not subject to military conscription; clergy have the right not to give evidence about facts that they are told confidentially as spiritual counsellors or which become known to them; the State recognises marriage registered by the church; the State will facilitate the creation of a body of military chaplains in the army; the State will facilitate the creation of a body of prison chaplains; programmes for the teaching of Orthodox doctrine in schools and the appointment of teachers proposed by the Church are to be confirmed by the State; the State and the Church have the right to implement joint social welfare programmes; the property of the Church is exempt from land tax and property tax; the property of the Church and other property rights are guaranteed by law; the State does not have the right to confiscate property from the Church; the Church has the right to receive donations and also income from letting its property.
Three drafts of the Constitutional agreement have been published, though the text will continue to be refined. The most recent draft has been sent for advice to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which is expected to give its opinion in May as to whether the agreement corresponds to international norms.
The consultations with the Council of Europe about the concordat are not binding as officials believe the long-standing precedent of concluding concordats between various states and the Catholic church is an indication of the legitimacy of the practice. During the present papacy alone the Vatican has concluded about 60 bilateral diplomatic treaties with European partners.
Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili, the head of the Baptist Church, told Keston on 2 April his church is concerned about the constitutional amendment. `I am dubious about the idea, since the position with regard to other religious bodies is not clear.' He said his church is also willing to enter into treaty relations with the state, but only if treaties are concluded with all religious organisations.
In response to these decisions four of the country's major Christian churches - the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church and the Baptist Church - have joined together to lobby for their interests. These churches are trying to achieve either the adoption of a special law on religious associations (Georgia has no such law) or the establishment of simple treaty relations (rather than constitutional agreements) between the state and all religious organisations.
Levan Ramishvili of the Tbilisi-based NGO the Liberty Institute told Keston by telephone on 2 April that many human rights activists regard the model of a constitutional agreement as more appropriate, as the adoption of a special law on freedom of conscience might repeat the Russian situation and lead to a law with discriminatory provisions. `But we believe that a concordat should be concluded with all religious associations regardless of their numbers and how long they have been active in Georgia.' Ramishvili proposes proceeding in stages: first an agreement with the Orthodox Church, then with all other religious groups.
However, Orthodox representatives have told Keston they would resist any constitutional agreements with any other faiths. `The Orthodox Church would welcome agreements between the state and other faiths, but would not welcome any constitutional agreements with other faiths,' Zurab Khovrebadze, deputy head of the Patriarchate's press service, told Keston on 3 April. `Such agreements must be on a lower level.' He declared that as the `traditional faith' of the Georgian people, the Orthodox Church had the
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