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  • BAKU: Ethnic Azeri Activist Says Foreign Services Behind Reported Tr

    ETHNIC AZERI ACTIVIST SAYS FOREIGN SERVICES BEHIND REPORTED TROUBLE IN GEORGIA

    Ekho, Baku
    26 Aug 06

    A leading member of an Azeri ethnic body in Georgia is perplexed
    about recent unconfirmed media reports about a campaign by the
    Georgian authorities against ethnic Azerbaijanis. In an interview
    with Ekho newspaper, Zumrud Qurbanov said it was probable that the
    foreign services of a number of countries were behind the recent
    trouble in Kvemo Kartli Province and it is high time the Georgian
    authorities expressed their view on the matter. The following are
    excerpts from R.Orucov's report by Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on 26
    August headlined "Who is stirring up trouble? Georgian Azerbaijanis
    are lost in conjectures and official Tbilisi simply keeps silent";
    subheadings have been inserted editorially:

    With some strange regularity more and more blatantly false reports have
    been appearing in the local media recently about incidents allegedly
    happening in eastern Georgia, in Kvemo Kartli Province which is
    populated primarily by Azerbaijanis. The original information, as a
    rule, comes from Baku, then it creates a natural stir in Georgia, and
    finally, without being backed up by any facts, is somehow forgotten.

    [Passage omitted: reports in Regnum agency about arrests of members
    of National Assembly of Azerbaijanis of Georgia which turned out to
    be false]

    Yesterday, Ekho asked an inhabitant of Marneulskiy District, a
    former Georgian MP and member of the board of the Qeyrat [Honour]
    National Movement of Georgian Azerbaijanis, Zumrud Qurbanov, to give
    his assessment of these events.

    Insulting leaflets distributed

    "To start with, all the cards have become shuffled, in the sense that
    much is being hyped up. All kinds of factitious forces have joined
    in the Georgian political game, and at times like these it is very
    difficult to sort out what is the truth and what isn't. Take a recent
    incident when leaflets with an insulting content were distributed
    en masse in our district. They carried the words: 'Tatrebo (Tatars -
    author's note), the land is ours. You were warned in 1991 - Georgia for
    the Georgians.' These fliers were circulated around Marneuli, during
    the night in 10-15 villages, and no-one noticed anybody. This is very
    strange. Is someone carrying out somebody's orders? After all, if these
    actions are not being done openly, not by definite political forces,
    and at the same time various statements are being heard from public
    platforms, the people are at a loss to know where an attack might
    come from, whether is it worth worrying about it, or whether it is
    serious or not. Let us try and work out who is benefiting by all this.

    "If one proceeds from the AzTV version, it is the Armenians who are
    behind this. But I live here and I can see this is not the work
    of Armenians. They are not interested in coming to Kvemo Kartli,
    where none of them live, to set Azerbaijanis against Georgians. And,
    incidentally, the Armenian media in Georgia has never paid any
    attention to this, especially as Armeniaphobia has been spread among
    the Georgians themselves.

    "Of course, it is easy for the Azerbaijani and Georgian leadership
    to attribute all these incidents to an Armenian trace. This helps
    them to maintain political and economic relations at the present
    level. In the past 15 years hundreds of interviews have appeared in
    which Azeri and Georgian politicians accuse the Armenians alone of
    all the sins of Kvemo Kartli. But if this is the case, then why in all
    these years have they been unable to find a single Armenian who could
    be accused of such actions? Where then are the authorities, where are
    the special services? This is a very important question. I do not rule
    out that these might be Armenians, but why then are the Georgian and
    Azerbaijani special services not working together on this question?

    Foreign services behind trouble

    "On the other hand, Russia, too, has always been named as the third
    force.

    We all know that there are certain problems at the moment between
    Georgia and Russia, and Russia has a vested interest in destabilizing
    the situation in Georgia. Let us suppose that Moscow wants to create
    the same tension in Akhalkalaki and Kvemo Kartli as in Abkhazia
    and South Ossetia. But if the Russians are behind this, that means
    some people here are working for their special services. Why, then,
    has not a single case of the participation of the Russian special
    services in these activities been proved based on the facts? Why is
    nothing being done at all and all we get is empty statements?

    "In other words, it cannot be ruled out that the special services of
    various states are operating in Georgia today, and there are local
    people who are serving the interests of different states. These
    could be Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, and so on. For example,
    instability in Georgia is of no benefit to Azerbaijan, since it is a
    strategic partner for Baku, and it is important that everything here
    is stable and normal. But then Azerbaijan must work side by side with
    Georgia in all crimes against the Azeris.

    "One thing is clear - some people are trying to exacerbate the
    situation in Kvemo Kartli and to use it either against the state or
    against the present government. But it is also perfectly possible
    that this is being done not from outside but from within, simply to
    give an impression that somebody is heating up the situation - in
    other words, by the state itself. Here we have thousands of leaflets
    being distributed surprisingly quickly and unnoticed.

    "This caused excitement among the Azeris. If the government was
    concerned, it would have immediately made a political statement about
    it. But neither the country's leadership nor the province has expressed
    any opinion about what happened, and they could have reassured the
    people and told them where they stood on it.

    "But everyone is keeping silent. And people are starting to say that
    it is not only external forces, but also the country's authorities who
    are benefiting from this. There are also Azeri emigres from Georgia
    who are living in Russia and writing articles in which they sharply
    and wrongly criticize the Georgian authorities, accusing them of things
    that are not happening or which are not important (although there are
    things which the authorities should be criticized for). And I have a
    feeling that these people are operating artificially, again one does
    not know on whose orders, so that in the future, when the Azeris have
    a real problem, nobody pays any attention to our complaints and does
    not take us seriously. Recently these people have been saying that
    they killed some Azeris in Marneuli or they beat up some people and
    detained them and their newspapers. But when one starts investigating
    the facts, one suddenly discovers that one person was killed in an
    accident, or something like that.

    One gets as far as the deputy Interior Minister and finds out that
    nobody of that name has been arrested.

    "These people should be putting their questions in another way -
    for example, why, when the Azeris are being treated unfairly, is not
    one single investigation taken to its conclusion and it drags out for
    years? It is not the Russians who are behind all this but some kind
    of local forces who offend the Azeris when they feel like it and try
    to portray us as professional swindlers.

    All this is being done artificially. I would even suggest that it is
    the Georgian special services, who have been given the task to prove to
    everyone that there are no problems among the Georgian Azerbaijanis,
    who are behind all this. Therefore, I think that the intelligence and
    special services of many different states in the region, including
    Georgian, are mixed up in all of this.

    It may even be that they are working together on some issues. And by
    the way, according to Georgian official data, 119,000 Azeris have
    left Kvemo Kartli and the country as a whole for good in the past
    ten years. This is 70-80 per cent of the overall number of people
    who have left here. And nobody gives this a thought."

    Azerbaijani MP and a member of the interparliamentary group of
    friendship between Georgia and Azerbaijan, Nasib Nasibli, found it
    difficult to say who might be behind all the intrigues and provocations
    of the past month in Kvemo Kartli.

    "We want to know what is the official attitude of the Georgian
    authorities to all this - how do they explain such incidents? But,
    in theory, there are those who want the Azeris to quit Georgia. And
    having followed all this for ten years, I believe there are certain
    forces of a chauvinist hue in Georgia who are putting pressure on
    the Azeris. That is a fact. On the other hand, theoretically, Russia,
    too, has a vested interest in a pocket of tension being created there,
    because of their relations with Georgia. It is a pity that we do not
    hear anything from representatives of the Georgian leadership about
    all this," Nasibli said.
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