Students Hold Demonstration In Front Of The UN Office In Zugdidi

Yesterday, students and non-governmental organization “New Generation for United Georgia” held a demonstration in front of the UN Office in Zugdidi. The students urged the UN officials to take part in the release of three students, who were detained near the village of Shamgona. Those students are Levan Ghachava, Iveria Korshia and Koba Rigvava. The Abkhazian de-facto Republic’s Special Forces detained them when they crossed the Enguri River to meet their Georgian friends in the village of Shamgona.

“Those people are young patriots. Here we have gathered in front of the UN office to urge its representatives to involve the process of resolving this problem. We need their attention…Our friends are arbitrarily detained in Abkhazia. There is no border between us, though they were detained for crossing it,” said Dato Chitanava, an activist of demonstrations.

Before this demonstration, the participants had gone on seven-day-hunger strike. Five students were on hunger strike in the building of the Tbilisi State University’s Branch during the whole week. However, their protest did not have any results.

Goga Samushia is one of hunger-strikers from the University building. He had been on a strike for a week but now he says that his effort had no result. “We stop hunger-strike because it had no result. Neither UN nor other international organizations has paid attention to us. Our demands have not been followed. Thus we will apply to new way of protests-we are going to hold large-scaled demonstrations,” said Samushia, who added that students are disappointed by total indifference.

During hunger-strike, an expert Paata Zakareishvili met students. He asked them to stop striking. He said that he appreciated the student’s heroic behavior; however he is sorry that the young people express their protest against Abkhazian side. “I greatly honor these young people. They are frank in their behavior. I am worried about the fact that they are on a strike against Abkhazian side, which does not care about their health at all. They should express their protest against those people whom they can influence, who is responsible to them, or against their government. Our youth are on a hunger strike that damages their health. I asked them to stop strike as their old friend. First of all we need healthy generation. Only an honest person can go on a strike and we need such people in future,” said Zakareishvili.

The students took Zakareishvili’s advice into consideration and now they applied to new measures of protest. However, the demonstrators could not receive any reply from the UN representatives.

Student Ana Kochua said that the representatives of the UN sent demonstrators questions to the Sokhumi office. The UN officials avoided answering media representatives’ questions.

According to students, the demonstrations will go on demanding the freedom of detainees until Abkhazians release them. Zakareishvili said that the detained students would not be released until Abkhazian elections are held, because it might be considered Bagafshi’s pro-Georgian activity. Thus, if he releases detainees before elections, he might lose polls.

Nana Sajaia, Zugdidi