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  • Armenians Seek Language Rights in Georgia

    Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
    IWPR Caucasus Reporting #681
    March 22 2013


    Armenians Seek Language Rights in Georgia



    For some politicians, allowing official use of minority languages is
    first step towards separatism.
    By Sopho Bukia - Caucasus

    Local officials in an Armenian-majority area of Georgia have sparked
    heated discussion by calling on the state to ratify an international
    treaty that protects minority languages.

    Members of the municipal assembly in the southern town of Akhalkalaki
    said they would write to parliament about the issue. The councillors
    are members of the Georgian Dream coalition which formed a government
    after winning elections in October.

    Georgia is home to about 250,000 ethnic Armenians, around five per
    cent of its total population. Most live in the mountainous
    Samtskhe-Javakheti region, bordering on Armenia and Turkey.

    In the southeast, another substantial minority, 280,000 Azeris, live
    along the border with Azerbaijan.

    The European Charter for Minority or Regional Languages, ECRML,
    commits member states in the Council of Europe to make education,
    court proceedings and state services available in minority languages
    in areas where they are traditionally spoken. Georgia pledged to
    ratify the charter when it joined the Council of Europe in 1999, but
    it has not yet done so.

    `We believe the protection of national minorities in Georgia's regions
    is an important element of building Georgia,' said a draft statement
    from the councillors in Akhalkalaki, who belong to the Republican
    faction within Georgian Dream. `We also note that protecting and
    developing regional languages and the languages of national minorities
    must not take place at the expense of the state language.'

    Council chairman Hamlet Movsesyan said the deputies had not yet agreed
    the final text.

    `This statement is still being worked on, and a final version will be
    sent to parliament. It does not emphasise the Armenian language. This
    statement is about ratification of the European charter,' he said.

    The Akhalkalaki assembly members said they did not consult their
    Georgian Dream allies in Tbilisi before raising the issue.

    The move has revived concerns about the implications of people from
    ethnic minorities failing to learn Georgian, the sole state language.

    Although the statement does not mention Armenian, the Georgian media
    interpreted it as a clear demand for official status for that
    language.

    `Georgian Dream Republicans demand status for Armenian language,' the
    ExpressNews Agency reported on March 15.

    Van Baiburt, an adviser to President Mikhail Saakashvili, told
    reporters that although he did not think ECRML would encourage
    separatism, it was still too soon to ratify it.

    `At a time when less than ten per cent of people from ethnic
    minorities speak the Georgian language, naturally it is not desirable
    to ratify the charter. It would turn out we were passing laws to
    totally stop instruction in Georgian,' he said.

    Tina Khidasheli, a member of parliament from the ruling Georgian Dream
    coalition, denied that ratifying ECRML would mean that state
    institutions no longer had to operate in Georgian.

    Vano Merabishvili, a former prime minister and now general secretary
    of Saakashvili's United National Movement, UNM, warned that giving
    official status to regional languages could encourage separatism. He
    said the UNM government had spent nine years trying to stop separatism
    gaining a foothold.

    David Darchiashvili, a legislator from the UNM, now the minority
    faction in parliament, pointed out that many other Council of Europe
    members had not ratified the treaty.

    He said Georgia should wait until it was secure from external threats
    before exposing itself to domestic risks.

    Referring to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have claimed
    independence since conflicts in the 1990s, Darchiashvili said, `When
    20 per cent of your territory is occupied, and then you hear
    statements from Moscow that Georgia should be `Tbilisi Province' [ie
    part of Russia], then it is not in our interest to raise these
    matters.'

    Paata Zakareishvili, State Minister for Reintegration, pointed out
    that it was Saakashvili himself who committed Georgia to ratifying
    ECRML 15 years ago, when he was head of parliament's legal committee.

    `Sooner or later, Georgia will have to join the charter, otherwise we
    will not achieve any of the European integration that Mr Saakashvili
    talks about so often. Also, the plan for a more liberal visa regime
    with the European Union cannot be signed until we accede to the
    charter,' he said.

    `So this is a difficult issue which must be considered by the public,
    the government and parliament. When we talk about moving closer to the
    European Union and European institutions, we need to discuss the
    difficulties that are preventing us from taking steps in that
    direction.'

    Sopho Bukia is an IWPR-trained journalist who works for the Rustavi-2
    broadcasting company.

    http://iwpr.net/report-news/armenians-seek-language-rights-georgia

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