Nationality – Pass to the Country

Nationality – Pass to the Country

Two Kists Added to the Number of those Deported from Georgia

The illegal deportation of people of Chechen and Kist nationalities from Georgia takes place quite frequently, and the Georgian Ministry of the Interior has once again followed the example of the past years by illegally deporting two Kist brothers, the Tsatiashvilis, a few days ago.

They crossed the border illegally, and were subsequently deported without explanation. According to Public Defender Sozar Subari, the employees of the Ministry of the Interior did not have the right to deport those people without following respective procedural norms.

The brothers, who are citizens of Russia and have until now been living in Grozno, addressed the Georgian Ministry of Refugees and Settlement on March 7 with a request to be granted refugee status. Employees of the Interior Ministry met the brothers and took them for interrogation, and then to the neutral zone of the Azerbaijan-Georgian border. On December 18 of 2004, the elder brother Shengeli Tsitiashvili had received confirmation that he is an asylum seeker who is waiting to receive refugee status, which makes the fact that his deportation was illegal even more obvious. According to Ucha Nanuashvili, Executive Director of Human Rights Information and Documentation Center, Georgia is a member of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Refugees, by which it is obliged to receive refugees and has no right to deport them without following specific procedural norms, which were ignored in the case of the two brothers. This fact, among others, points to a violation of the international agreement and the undertaken obligations.

The operation was conducted in a concealed manner and without the appropriate paperwork. Even the fact of brothers’ crossing of the border has not been documented.

According to Khizri Aldamov, a representative of the Chechen Diaspora, such circumstances are common. He says that once it is sufficiently established that a person who wants to cross the Georgian border is a Chechen or a Kist, he is deported immediately, whether or not they have the appropriate documents. This is confirmed by the case of Magamed Gazimiev, a doctor of Chechen nationality who came to Georgia from Russia by plane for his friends’s wedding. He was made to return to Russia directly from the airport solely because he is Chechen. According to Soso Djachvliani, an actor who met Gazimiev at the airport, Gazimiev had all the needed documents and the bordermen had absolutely no grounds to deport him.

Currently, there is a standing verbal order from the Minister of the Interior calling for the deportation of people of Chechen and Arab nationalities. And for those who haven’t been deported, it is unclear why the  re-registration of refugees living in the Pankisi Gorge is planned, in spite of the fact that the Ministry of Refugees and Setlement conducted their registration a few months ago. This time the Chechen refugees are to be registered in a more detailed way, with records of ethnic origin, age, and other details to be recorded.

The registration of Chechen refugees in Pankisi Gorge took place a few months ago. According to this data there are about 2000 refugees living in the Pankisi Gorge, out of which 1200 are Kists and 800 are Chechens.