Georgia: World Court provides second battleground for Tbilisi and Moscow

Nina Akhmeteli: 9/11/08

After three days of arguments at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Georgian officials are feeling confident that their ethnic cleansing accusations against Russia will be found to have merit. Moscow has dismissed the allegations as groundless.

"I hope that if everything is fair we have a good chance to win this case," commented State Minister for Territorial Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili.

A decision is expected within several weeks. Moscow has asked the court to reject the case as groundless.

Georgia hopes that a favorable ruling by the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, will stop what it claims is systematic harassment of ethnic Georgians in areas under the control of Russian forces. "What we are asking from the court ... is that we need the court's urgent assistance to stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Georgian population from the territories which fall under the control of the Russian Federation," First Deputy Justice Minister Tina Burjaliani, who is among those representing the Georgian government at The Hague, said in a statement.

The Georgian government has stated that it began work on the case before the outbreak of war with Russia, basing its arguments on the outflow of ethnic Georgians from Moscow-backed separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia during the early 1990s. Tbilisi adds that "the recent Russian invasion of Georgia, which triggered a new wave of ethnic cleansing, forced Georgia to speed up its submission to the Court." The government cites the 1965 UN International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination as the basis for petitioning the ICJ, the UN's highest court.

The August 8-12 war with Russia caused the displacement of about 128,000 individuals within Georgia, according to estimates by UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.

In response to the Georgian suit, Russia is petitioning for a dismissal. The points of contention between Georgia and Russia have "nothing to do with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination," the Kremlin-financed Russia Today television channel quoted Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands Kirill Gevorgian as saying.

In a recent conference call with journalists organized by the Georgian government, Payam Akhavan, a former legal advisor to the prosecutor's office at the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, said that he would be "exceedingly surprised" if the court decided not to consider the case. "The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination is built exactly for this sort of situation and ethnic cleansing is the most extreme form of discrimination imaginable," he said. "There is a solid basis for the court's jurisdiction."

If the court decides to take the case, it will open up the way for Georgia's lawsuit accusing Russia of breaching the Convention on Elimination All forms of Racial Discrimination since the beginning of the 1990s, when the conflicts with the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia began.

Georgian officials, citing United Nations agency and human rights groups' reports, maintain there is plenty of evidence to support their claims. UN satellite images analyzed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch have been cited to confirm the widespread torching of ethnic Georgian villages inside South Ossetia.

The August 29 report found that the destruction of five villages was caused by "intentional burning and not armed combat." HRW researchers spoke with village residents who described the looting and burning of ethnic Georgian villages and with Ossetian militia members, who "openly admitted" setting the houses on fire.

"All of this adds up to compelling evidence of war crimes and grave human rights abuses," said Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division of HRW in a statement. "This should persuade the Russian government it needs to prosecute those responsible for these crimes."

UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, has continued to report about Georgians leaving villages in the buffer zone between Gori and South Ossetia. A report, issued on September 2, stated that residents from Beloti "said more than half of the village's population of some 200 people" had initially fled the village. "Those who remained behind are now leaving due to beatings, harassment, looting and burning of houses," the report asserted. "[M]assive intimidation by marauding militias" prompted "some 450 people" overall to leave their villages for Gori during the last week of August, the report continued.

Manana Kobakhidze, board chairperson for the Georgian non-governmental organization Article 42 of the Constitution, said that her group has received similar information from the border zone north of Gori. Local human rights defenders, parliamentarians and some international organizations have claimed that the Russian peacekeeping forces have blocked them from entering the border zone to conduct their own probes or to deliver aid shipments.

Nonetheless, not all travelers encounter these problems. Two reporters for EurasiaNet.org had no difficulty traveling to Georgian villages north of Gori on September 9, and interviewing local residents. Ossetian militia guarding the formerly Georgian-controlled village of Akhalgori in South Ossetia required accreditation from the separatist government in Tskhinvali before allowing entrance. Village residents in the buffer zone, however, stopped short of describing their situation as one of "active terror," as termed by Kobakhidze, though stressed that they felt unsafe in the villages at night.

Despite the fear of land mines in villages elsewhere in the occupied zone, a few individuals could be seen working in the fields that line the main road from Karaleti to Tskhinvali, a deserted thoroughfare a few weeks ago. A large group of older women and men had gathered outside of an International Red Cross truck in the village of Tkviavi, but villagers said that families are still keeping younger women and children outside of the zone for fear of their safety.

Editor's Note: Nina Akhmeteli is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi. Elizabeth Owen, EurasiaNet's Caucasus news editor in Tbilisi, added reporting to this story.