Letter: Georgia wants to erase Abkhazia
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Your correspondent Hugh Pope ('Taming the unruly people of Georgia', 28 April) is certainly correct in drawing attention to the chaos, violence and general economic misery that characterise present-day Georgia, and to the fact that Georgians are set against Georgians.
However, what he says about the Abkhazian crisis is seriously misleading. We Abkhazians are not, as Mr Pope (employing the terminology of the Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze) maintains, 'separatists' or 'rebels'. We are autonomists who, in reaction to the unprovoked Georgian attack on Abkhazia last summer, are fighting for our very survival as an ethnic group.
Not only has the ethnically mixed population of Abkhazia been subject to pillage, torture, rape and murder, but a systematic effort has also been made to obliterate the historical memory of the Abkhazian people, who have their own language and have been settled in the region since antiquity, through the deliberate destruction of archives, libraries and museums.
We would like to emphasise that it is not only the Abkhazians who are threatened by what Andrei Sakharov once described as the 'mini-empire' of Georgia but so, too, are the Mingrelians, South Ossetians, the Adjarians (Muslim Georgians), Russians, Armenians, Greeks, Catholics and Baptists.
We call upon Western governments, including Britain, to exert the maximum pressure on the Shevardnadze regime to respect the human rights of the various ethnic groups in the area and, indeed, of the Georgian people themselves. If there is no rapid and fair solution to the current crisis in Abkhazia, we fear the imminent outbreak of a generalised conflict in the Caucasus region, the consequences of which will be incalculable.
Yours sincerely,
YURI VORONOV
STANISLAV LAKOBA
(Deputies, Parliament
of Abkhazia)
LIANA KVARCHELIA
Gudauta, Abkhazia
28 April
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments