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BBC Covers Georgian War Crimes
// Tbilisi denies it
BBC Radio 4 carried a report Tuesday evening in which eyewitnesses to the Georgian – South Ossetian conflict in August talked about the repeated use of weapon by the Georgian army against civilians. Tbilisi denies the charges aired by the British government broadcaster. But they have already called the Georgian actions “reckless” and promised to deal with them.
Journalist Tim Whewell’s report was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday evening. It ran 6 minutes and 18 seconds and quoted eyewitness accounts and a Human Rights Watch representative. The reports states that “Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region of South Ossetia” with “possible deliberate targeting of civilians.”
Eyewitnesses of the events in August told the BBC correspondent that Georgian tanks fired on residential buildings and soldiers shot at civilians as they tried to flee the fighting in cars. Tskhinvali resident Taya Sitnik said that she saw a Georgian tank stop near her five-story apartment house and begin to fire methodically at every floor. “They started firing not from rifles, but from heavy weapons. Shells were exploding,” she said. Whewell noted that the damage to the building congruous with Sitnik’s account.
Marina Kochieva, a doctor at the Tskhinvali city hospital, said that she and her family were also the target of Georgian tank fire. She and three of her relatives tried to leave the city on the night of August 8, but Georgian soldiers opened fire on their car. The driver lost control of the vehicle and it ran off the road but, Kochieva said, they continued to fire on them after that. She showed the BBC where the incident occurred. The bullet holes were visible in the car.
Whewell also looked at Georgian villages in the conflict zone. Several houses had been burned by Ossetian militias, after which authorities ordered them torn down with bulldozers.
Official Tbilisi reacted to Whewell’s report several hours after it was aired. “We completely deny everything that was said and all accusations of war crimes,” stated Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. He added that he personally gave the order not to fire on civilians, and Georgian soldiers “shot only at firing points.” Commander of the Georgian peacekeepers in the conflict zone Gen. Murman Kurashvili repeated that “All of those tales about us firing cannons on ‘peaceful sleeping Tskhinvali’ and ‘peaceful sleeping Ossetian villages and Ossetian elderly, women and children’ are cynical lies. Ossetian bands and their Russian protectors began preparing for the war and ethnic cleansing of the Georgian population on August 1-2 and evacuated all civilians from Tskhinvali and Ossetian villages in the zone of military action.”
The facts reported by the BBC were also denied by the Georgian opposition and human rights activists. “The main crimes and even savageries were committed by the Russians,” declared Levan Berdzenishvili, a dissident in Soviet times and now a leader of the Georgian opposition. “Maybe Georgian soldiers committed crimes, but we didn’t go outside our state border.” He suggested that “some sort of Russian financial structures” were behind Whewell’s report. Well-known human rights activist Elena Tevdoradze also expressed doubt about the accuracy of the report.
In the West, however, the BBC material was accepted as reliable. In particular, British Foreign Minister David Miliband promised to treat the charges in the BBC report very seriously. “I think the Georgian action was reckless, I think the Russian response was disproportionate and wrong,” Miliband stated. “And that is the series of events that have landed us where we are. On my visit to Tbilisi of course I raised at the highest level in Georgia, the questions that have been asked and raised about war crimes and other military actions by the Georgian authorities.” Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Fried said that the United States had repeatedly warned Georgia that the use of force in South Ossetia was inadmissible. He said he was not sure if Georgia intentionally attacked civilians, but the actions of the Georgian army raised a number of serious concerns for the U.S. administration.
Germans Oppose Georgian NATO Membership
Two-thirds of German citizens consider Georgia’s membership in NATO unacceptable, according to a poll conducted by the German sociological research institute Forsa. A total of 68 percent of respondents held that opinion. The main proponents of that view were residents of the former East German, people over 60, leftists and “Greens.” About 18 percent thought that Georgia should become a NATO member. Young people less than 29 years of age living in the Western part of the country most often supported that position. The remainder of respondents were unable to form a clear opinion.
Half of the respondents (51%) thought that Germans had become more critical of Russia since the conflict with Georgia. Thirty-nine percent of respondents thought that attitudes remained unchanged. When asked whether German soldiers should take part in peacekeeping operations in Georgia, 87 percent answered negatively. People over 60 were especially opposed to the participation of German soldiers in peacekeeping missions in the Caucasus. Only 10 percent of that age group responded that they considered it necessary.
When asked at the end of the survey “Who is a greater danger to a peaceful conclusion to the conflicts arising in recent years: U.S. President George Bush or Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin?” 71 percent indicated that the answer was Bush, 10 percent selected Putin and 15 percent answered that they are an equal threat. – RIA Novosti
Olga Berezintseva; Georgy Dvali, Tbilisi
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 30, 2008
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