MINELRES: Caucasus Reporting Service No. 136: excerpts

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WELCOME TO IWPR'S CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 136, Month 07, 2002.

KRASNODAR IMMIGRANTS FEAR EXPULSION - Hundreds of thousands of
migrants in southern Russia are coming under pressure to leave the
region. Eduard Aslanov reports from Krasnodar

ARMENIA: INDEPENDENT CHANNEL KICKED OFF AIR - The decision to pull the
plug on a popular channel is widely blamed on the government's
intolerance of dissenting voices in the media. Ashot Gazazian reports
from Yerevan

GEORGIA: MOVES TO CURB RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE - The government and
rights groups want to stop attacks on non-Orthodox Christian
communities in Georgia but differ on the means to do so. Anna Jibuti
and Levan Ramishvili report from Tbilisi

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KRASNODAR IMMIGRANTS FEAR EXPULSION

Hundreds of thousands of migrants in southern Russia are coming under
pressure to leave the region

By Eduard Aslanov in Krasnodar

About 200 Meskhetian Turks in Russia's Krasnodar region have been on
hunger strike since the end of June, in protest at what they say is a
drive by the local authorities to get rid of them.

The protesters, camped in the village of Kievskoe, have vowed to
"starve to victory".  Locals have formed a circle around the
demonstrators to guard them against possible attacks by Cossacks.

"It's a disaster waiting to happen," said Tamara Karasteleva, director
of the Novorossiysk Human Rights Committee. She complained that
instead of talking to the protesters, the governor of the Krasnodar
region, Alexander Tkachev, had simply called them "saboteurs".

The hunger-strikers say the local authorities deny their young people
access to education, refuse to marry them or call them up for military
service, on the grounds that they are temporary residents.

The Meskhetian Turks are among the least fortunate Soviet minorities.
Deported under Stalin from Samtskhe-Javakheti, in southern Georgia, to
Central Asia in the 1940s, many were subsequently expelled from
Uzbekistan during the Gorbachev era.

Some settled in Russia's Krasnodar region, hoping Georgia would honour
its commitment to the Council of Europe and let them return to their
home by the year 2010.

But here, too, they feel unwanted. Yusif Sarvarov, head of the
international Meskhetian Turk organisation, Vatan, said the worst
disability the community suffered was a bar on leasing land, which he
said robbed them of "the only way we can support ourselves".

"By depriving us of the right to lease land, they are forcibly turning
us into criminals," said Nuratdin Chukadze, a Vatan activist who has
joined the hunger strike. "My family has been living here for nearly
15 years. We have nowhere else to go, so will remain on strike until
Russia, as a successor to the Soviet Union, recognizes us, former
Soviet citizens, as bona fide members of the community."

The Turks are only one of several ethnic minorities facing an official
backlash in the region, which is home to many communities. The
Krasnodar Centre for Ethnic Cultures, which represents the various
minorities in the region, says 250,000 Armenians live there alongside
40,000 Kurds, 30,000 Meskhetian Turks and smaller communities of
Dagestanis, Azerbaijanis, Assyrians, Georgians, Crimean Tatars and
others.

Local human rights activists complain of a growing "anti-immigrant
psychosis" in the area, affecting all non-Russian minorities, in
particular Armenians. Last October, Governor Tkachev publicly boosted
this prejudice when he delivered a speech declaring that "people of
different views and creeds will be deported".  He followed this up
this April by signing a new local law on residence permits, tightening
the screws on immigrants.

Two Kurds from Armenia, Khudo Asoyan and Ishkhan Kuvatian, were the
first victims of the legislation. The local authorities escorted them
and their families to the railway station and forced them on a train
to Rostov.

The Union of Armenians of Russia, which numbers 2 million members,
complained, accusing the governor in a statement of "undermining the
foundations of inter-ethnic peace".

Svetlana Mints, a local university professor and NGO activist, said
Tkachev stance threatened the racial harmony between the 128
nationalities living among the 5 million inhabitants of the Krasnodar
area. "Ethnic intolerance, which has been massively instilled in
people's minds by (local) leaders for years, threatens to upset the
balance and disrupt peace in the community," she said.

But officials have ignored these complaints and maintain that the
deportations of "illegal immigrants" will continue. Tkachev is equally
unrepentant, even comparing the influx of newcomers from former Soviet
republics to the "bandit raids of nomadic hordes in olden times". The
governor accuses migrants of "squeezing out" Krasnodar people from
their trades and crafts.

The authorities have enlisted the backing of Krasnodar's most famous
natives, the Cossacks, for their xenophobic campaign. The chief, or
"ataman" of the Yekaterinodar unit of the local Cossack troop recently
declared that the governor could count on the support of "tens and
hundreds of thousands" of them.

For all that, the populist campaign is unlikely to succeed in its aim
of deterring migrants. Even if the administration drives many
"foreigners" from the southern Caucasus, it can do nothing about the
tens of thousands of mainly Muslim North Caucasians who are Russian
citizens.

Local journalist Gennady Kurov says Muslims from Dagestan would soon
fill any space vacated by exiled Turks, Kurds or Armenians. Kurov
described the drive as hopelessly confused. "No one knows with
certainty how many illegal migrants there are in the country," he
said. "They call them all 'aliens', but just about anyone can be
stigmatised as an alien."

Eduard Aslanov is the pseudonym of an independent journalist based in
Krasnodar.

..................

GEORGIA: MOVES TO CURB RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

The government and rights groups want to stop attacks on non-Orthodox
Christian communities in Georgia but differ on the means to do so

By Anna Jibuti and Levan Ramishvili in Tbilisi

The justice ministry circulated a draft act on religious observance
among all faith communities and interested NGOs earlier this week,
asking them to review it and return their comments. It marks the first
attempt by the government to straighten out the legal framework on
religion since Georgia declared independence in 1991.

Religious activity in Georgia is currently regulated by articles in
the penal code and constitution that guarantee freedom of religion and
worship. However, the constitution also grants the Georgian Orthodox
Church a "special role".

The new bill, initiated by President Eduard Shevardnadze, has been
made necessary by a recent upsurge of violence against religious
minorities, which drew criticism from the Council of Europe in April
and the US State Department in May.

Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostal groups, Baptists and other
denominations have all suffered at the hands of Georgia's religious
militants. Basile Mkalavishvili is thought to have masterminded most
of the attacks. An excommunicated priest, he has founded his own
denomination, the Gldansk Orthodox Church, named after the Gldansk
district of Tbilisi where he is based.

Mkalavishvili's raiders burn their opponents' religious literature and
assault their congregations, often using heavy wooden crosses studded
with nails as weapons. The venues where Jehovah's Witnesses and
Baptists congregate as well as their private homes have all been
targeted.

While the attacks have drawn widespread condemnation, opinions differ
on the measures required to stop them. The government maintains that
the solution lies in fresh legislation. Others claim that existing
laws are quite adequate and simply need to be applied.

"Religious persecution can be stopped by [a new] law," said the deputy
justice minister, Zurab Ezugbaya, who said the authorities would
consult widely in order to produce "a bill that will really work".

But Giorgy Chkheidze, of the Association of Young Lawyers, argued that
Georgia did not need a new law on religion, "It is amply covered by
the constitution and the penal code has all the necessary provisions,
including remedies against religious extremism." Chkheidze complained
that the existing ordinances were not being enforced. "This new bill
is a hoax devised to pacify the international watchdogs," he said.

The lawyer's assertion is supported by the fact that no one has yet to
go to prison for religious violence, in spite of the existence of
copious evidence collected by human rights groups and recorded in
police reports over the past two years.

The thugs draw on a popular nationalist sentiment in favour of
Orthodoxy as the traditional faith of the people and a corresponding
attitude of suspicion towards newer cults as alien implants. Marina
Mirianashvili, a teacher, voiced the sentiment of many educated
professional when she complained of the "acolytes of imported
religions" making use of the country's economic difficulties to
"destroy our national identity". Whilst most of those who espouse this
view are against violence themselves, religious militants use this
reasoning to justify their heavy-handed tactics.

A raid on a Jehovah's Witnesses group in Tbilisi's Gldansk district in
October 1999 left 16 seriously injured. On August 17, 2000
Mkalavishvili's followers attacked a group of human rights activists
and journalists attending a religious violence trial. In each case,
the police took no action.

The authorities were finally forced to take action when a group of
American Protestant pastors were attacked in March 2001. Charges were
brought against Mkalavishvili and the prosecutor's office in Tbilisi
opened 10 criminal investigations into 17 violent incidents involving
him and his fanatics. But the case soon collapsed, leaving the latter
free to resume their raids with new gusto. Last May, the former priest
even published a book glorifying his "crusade against the sects of
Satan".

International institutions, including the UN High Commission on Human
Rights and the Council of Europe, have attacked the Georgian
government for lack of resolve in tackling religious extremism and for
its inability to ensure freedom of worship for all.

Responding to the avalanche of hostile comments, President
Shevardnadze issued a decree on the protection of human and minority
rights on May 17, which forms the basis of the proposed Religions Act.

Deputy Justice Minister Ezugbaya said the new law would introduce "a
uniform registration procedure" for all religious groups in the
country. "After this bill is enacted, it will be immaterial what you
believe in - you could be the Antichrist for all we care - if your
charter and other paperwork is in order, you will get registration,"
he said.

Nevertheless, human rights groups and lawyers remain unconvinced.
Chkheidze, like many other experts, singles out the fourth paragraph
of the proposed bill, on "Unfair Proselytising", for particular
criticism. This is defined as "attempts to convert citizens to your
creed by means of ideological or psychological pressure or material
benefits" and will be punishable by up to two years in prison.

Chkheidze insisted almost any social or charitable work could be made
to fit this definition of "unfair proselytising" and described the
term "ideological pressure" as equally vague. "If this wording gets
into the final draft, any religious organization can be banned in a
second," he said.

The authors of the draft, however, remain convinced that the new law
will curb religious intolerance once and for all. "If the law
enforcement authorities are still unable to handle religious
extremism, at least we (now) will have irrefutable evidence that
government is not living up to its commitments," Ezugbaya said.

Anna Jibuti and Levan Ramishvili are staff members of the Freedom
Institute, a Tbilisi-based NGO

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