There are about 7000 victims in the case Georgia has filed against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights.
Photo: Yury Tutov
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Russia Objects to Georgian Suit
Moscow considers the Georgian suit against it, filed in the European Court of Human Rights in 2007 in response to the mass deportation of Georgian citizens, to be invalid. Kommersant has learned that the Russian Justice Ministry has sent a 235-page objections to the Georgian ministry, in which it calls Georgia's claims “unacceptable.” A copy of the document was delivered to the court as well. Georgian lawyers are preparing their response. They are also deciding whether or not to drop the case against Russia for the sake of renewing friendship with it.
Russia's representative in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Deputy Minister of Justice Veronika Milinchuk, told Kommersant that Russia has prepared its objections to the Georgian suit against it and sent them to Tbilisi and Strasbourg. “We have carefully studied the Georgian complaint and based our objections on the criteria of acceptability established by the European Convention on Human Rights point by point as they are listed there,” she said. Moscow's response was quite weighty: a 235-page document entitled “Objections of the Authorities of the Russian federation to Facts Claimed by the Authorities of Georgia.” In the lengthy objections, the Russian Justice Ministry dismisses all claims made against it by Georgia and refuses to acknowledge violations of a number of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights by Russian authorities during the mass deportation of Georgians at the end of 2006.
It was the tensest period in Russian-Georgian relations, when, after the arrest in September 2006 of four military intelligence officers by Georgian special services and their declaration as personae non gratae, Moscow undertook a range of punitive measures against Tbilisi. Visas were no longer issued to Georgian citizens, transportation routes were blocked and an embargo was declared on Georgian goods, such as wine and Borjomi mineral water. At the same time, Russian law enforcement carried out a nationwide operation to find, detain and expel Georgian migrant laborers. In the course of a few months, 7000 Georgian passport holders were sent away.
In response, Georgia filed a complaint against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights on March 26 of last year, beginning an precedent-setting case. Russia has never before been the defendant in a case brought by another state; only individuals and organizations have filed suit against it before now. Russian authorities are accused in the suit of violating a six articles and several protocols of the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically, article 3, prohibiting torture; article 5 on the right to liberty and security of person and article 8 on respect for private and family life, as well as articles 13, 14 and 18, the right to effective remedy, prohibition of discrimination and limits to the use of restrictions of rights, respectively.
Georgia's main demand is for an official apology. But it has not forgotten he material side of the case either. The Georgians have not yet named a sum for compensation but, considering that about 7000 people are involved, it may be in the millions of euros. The final decision on monetary questions is always made by the court.
Moscow Doesn't Believe in Deaths
The Russian position, as explained to Kommersant by Milinchuk, is not only that those claims are ungrounded, but that the acceptability of the consideration of the case by the Strasbourg court is questionable. One of the Justice Ministry's main arguments is that the Georgian citizens whose rights Tbilisi is accusing Moscow of violating did not appeal their deportations in Russian courts. “We especially note that, in almost all cases specified by the Georgian side, with one exception, the courts' decisions on administrative expulsion were not appealed, and that is an unalterable requirement of the European Court of Human Rights – exhaustion of means of national defense,” Milinchuk stated. “Many of those who were deported in that period were visited by employees of Georgian diplomatic offices who could not be unaware that the decisions of the courts could be appealed. All the more since that was indicated in the decisions themselves.”
Russia is pressing for the dismissal of the complaint not only on procedural grounds. Milinshuk said that, based on information from Russian agencies such as the Interior Ministry, Federal Migration Service, FSB and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which provided the planes that took the Georgian citizens out of Russia, several of the claims were completely unfounded. “Among other things, Georgia mentions in its complaint that, in that period, Russia removed books by authors of Georgian extraction from sale. We checked that. It turned out that, in the 1950s, works by Georgian authors Iosif Dzhugashvili [Stalin] and Lavrenty Beria were removed from sale. There have been no other cases,” she said.
Moscow is also insisting that the deportation of Georgians in 2006 was not organized and was not carried out on the basis of ethnicity. To back up its claim, the Justice Ministry counted the number of people deported at that time and their nationalities. Those statistics show that, in 2006, more Uzbeks than anyone else were deported – 6089 people, while 4022 were deported to Georgia. The situation was similar in the first half of 2007, according to Milinchuk, when 1259 people were deported to Uzbekistan, and 848 to Georgia. “They tell us that people were expelled from Russia by carbon-copy decisions that the courts allegedly made in absentia, in the absence of the people whose rights such a decision directly affects. According to our verification, that is not so,” the deputy minister said.
Finally, Russia categorically denies the most serious of the charges, concerning cases of the death of Georgians during the height of the conflict between Moscow and Tbilisi. In the source documents prepared by Georgia, the main attention is given to the deaths of three Georgian citizens during the deportation process. Moreover, the list of victims of the “anti-Georgian campaign” consists not only of those who died during deportation, but also those who Georgian authorities say were killed in Moscow and other Russian cities because of ethnic hatred. According to Tbilisi, a total of seven people were killed. “Such a number of deaths of people being deported is unprecedented in European practice, at least in the last 60 years since the defeat of Fascism,” commented current Georgian Justice Minister Nika Gvaramia, who headed the commission on the Russian deportations that collected the material for the suit in 2006 and 2007.
It is claimed in Russia's objections, however, that people did not die upon deportation, but from chronic diseases. “In the suit, three cases of death are mentioned,” Milinchuk stated. “Prosecutor's organs conducted a check of all the cases indicated. It was established that there were no outward causes of death, that is, any signs of violence or other signs of illegal activity. In every case, the cause of death was connected with illnesses like tuberculosis and hypertension.”
Tbilisi Assesses the Risk
Georgia now has to study the material presented by Moscow and make its own commentary on it. “We have received the position of the Russian federation and are preparing material to send to the European Court of Human Rights,” Georgian representative at the court David Tomadze told Kommersant. “The Russian Federation denies all of our claims and does not want to make compensation. We will act by the rules and carry out the case to the end.” There are several ways the case may develop from here. The judges of the Strasbourg court will study the arguments of both sides and make a decision on whether or not to accept the Georgian case for consideration or not.
Lawyers questioned by Kommersant gave differing assessments of the case's chances. Karina Mosalenko, head of the Center of International Protection, which helps Russian citizens prepare suits in the European Court of Human Rights, says that Georgia can expect to be successful, since there is a large number of violations of the European Convention. Her colleague Sergey Golubok of the firm Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasyev and Partners says that the Russian objections to the procedural unacceptability of the suit have merit. “The Georgians will most likely say now that they were not required to exhaust all means of legal protection in Russian courts because administrative practice took place [massive passage of identical sentences]. The question is whether they can prove to 17 judges that the Russian side had a targeted policy.”
The court may make its decision this summer. At present, the docket is filled through June and the case of Georgia v. Russia is not on it.
Moscow and Tbilisi may reached a settlement out of political motivation. Georgia is now looking for ways to make peace with Russia. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, reelected in January, has renounced his previous anti-Russian rhetoric ad Georgian diplomats have been visiting Moscow more and more often recently, conducting negotiations on removing visa restrictions, the wine embargo and other negative effects of the conflict with Russia.
Dropping the case in the European Court of Human Rights would be interpreted as a sign of goodwill. “It's hard to say yet whether it will be possible to reach an out-of-court settlement of the case with Russia,” Konstantin Gabashvili, chairman of the Georgian parliament foreign affairs committee, told Kommersant. “But if there is a decision to stop the case for the sake of attaining more important goals, it will be dropped. In politics, anything can happen.”
States That Have Sues Each Other in the European Court
December 16, 1971. Ireland filed suit against Great Britain in the European Court of Human Rights. Dublin accused British authorities of using extrajudicial arrest and cruelty treatment of prisoners against Northern Irish separatists. On January 18, 1978, the court found the defendant guilty of “cruel and inhumane” interrogation methods. The claimant did not demand monetary compensation.
November 22, 1994. Cyprus sued Turkey, accusing it of violating the rights of Greek Cypriotes who had disappeared, been deprived of their homes or lived in enclaves after the occupation of the northern part of the island in 1974. On May 10, 2001, the European Court of Human Rights found Ankara guilty of violating 14 clauses of the Convention on Human Rights. The claimant did not demand monetary compensation.
January 7, 1997. Denmark filed suit against Turkey, accusing Turkish authorities of cruelty to a Danish citizen who had come to that country for the funeral of his brother and been detained by Turkish police under suspicion of collaborating with the Workers' Party of Kurdistan. On April 5, 2000, the court closed the case after an out-of-court settlement was reached. Turkey agreed to pay $58,000 in court costs and aid to the victim, and Denmark agreed to finance a program to teach Turkish police the fundamentals of human rights.
Georgia Dissatisfied with Russian Presidential Election in Disputed Territories
Russian Ambassador to Georgia Vyacheslav Kovalenko was summoned to the Georgian Foreign Ministry yesterday, where Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze handed him a note of protest in connection with the holding of Russian presidential elections in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and demanded an explanation. Vashadze noted that Georgia has no objections to the opening of polls in Tbilisi and Batumi, since those polls were opened with the agreement of the country's authorities and operate legally. Tbilisi objects to the opening of polls in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where early voting in the Russian presidential election is taking place from February 25 to 28, however, since the Russian Central Elections Commission decided to conduct it without discussing it with Georgian authorities. “Tbilisi looks on the organization and conduct of elections of the president of the Russian Federation in Abkhazian and Tskhinvali regions without an agreement with the central authorities of Georgia as a violation of the norms of international law and as disregard for Georgian sovereignty,” the note reads.
At a meeting with Russian journalists after the conversation in the Georgian Foreign Ministry, Kovalenko responded to the charges that he saw nothing illegal in citizens of Abkhazia and South Ossetia taking part in the Russian presidential election. “The Russian Constitution gives every citizen of the Russian Federation, wherever he may be located, the right to fulfill his civil duty and take part in presidential elections,” the ambassador said.
Vladimir Solovyev
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 27, 2008
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