Political aggravation of the Russian-Georgian relationship turned into mass violations of human rights. People, who have nothing to do with politics suffer from ethnic discrimination and humiliating check-ups. Police detains all Georgians regardless of their citizenship, age and social status. (26-OCT-06)
Text: HRH/Moscow, by Yanina Savenko. Sources: demos-center.ru, newsru.com, svobodanews.ru
Among the most outrageous actions, Ministry of Internal Affaires prepared lists of pupils with Georgian names in order to extract from children information about their families’ addresses. At the same time the Police continue to detain some Georgian citizens whom Russian authorities consider to be illegal immigrants for their further deportation. By some estimates, more than 800 Georgian citizens were already deported. Moreover, the expulsions are executed with reported human rights abuses. According to Georgian Ambassador in the Russian Federation Zurab Pataradze more than 2000 Georgian citizens could be deported too, because the courts made another 2117 decisions. Assessing the situation, human rights activist come to conclusion that events happening in the Russian Federation are nothing else than xenophobia.
Georgian citizens are starved in detention centers
A young Georgian man was detained on a Moscow street, when he came to a store in his slippers. According to him he was kept in a police station for two days. Then he was brought to the Tverskoy court, which delivered a verdict of deportation. After the court session he was detained for another six days in degrading conditions. There were 25 people, including children in an 8-person cell. The detainees were allowed to use the phone and the washroom as well as to drink only once a day. Relatives of the young man had to pay 3000 rubles to a police employee to send the detained man to Tbilisi by plane belonging to the Ministry of Extraordinary Situations.
Racist mayhem in a Moscow supermarket
On October, 18th a woman and a child of Georgian ancestry were attacked in a Moscow supermarket. Several customers shouted anti-Georgian slogans and insults, pushed, pinched, spat and threw food at them. There were no security guards present and no one from the staff or other customers interfered in the incident. The victims didn’t even apply for medical help and didn’t turn to police for fear for their security.
Attack on Moscow Gallery of Marat Gelman
On October, 21st ten people raided exhibition and the offices of the Gallery. They lined up the workers along the wall and took their mobile phones away. According to Gelman this was pure scaremongering. Nothing was stolen, but 20 of Alexander Dzhikiya pictures were destroyed. Russia’s cultural elite aired an open letter of protest against anti-Georgian states of public opinion in the Russian society, – said Alla Gerber, President of public foundation “Holocaust”, who had also signed the letter.
