On August 25, three Georgian citizens were detained by the law supporting officials of South Ossetia. The detainees carrying video equipment penetrated into the Leningori region of South Ossetia, in violation of the rules established by Republic’s legislation for the citizens of the neighbouring states. On August 27, journalists from the Georgian TV-companies ‘Rustavi-2’ and ‘Mze’ were also detained by the representatives of the Republic’s Internal Ministry on charges of violating the rules established for entry and stay on South Ossetia’s territory and of carrying out video filming without proper accreditation.
After proper investigation and with the observance of all legal procedures the detainees were deported from South Ossetia’s territory.
These insignificant incidents were used by the Georgian side as a means of supercharging the Georgian-Ossetian relations and discrediting the peace-keeping operation in the zone of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. Thus, on August 28 of this year, Mr. Merabishvili, Head of Georgia’s Internal Ministry qualified the actions by the Internal Ministry of the Republic of South Ossetia as ‘a criminal act against Georgia’s citizens’ and sounded threats directed at them.
Later, at 6.00 on August 29, the transport communication with South Ossetia was blocked by the Georgian Internal Ministry’s units subordinated to Mr. Merabishvili. Later that same day, at 8.00 three servicemen from the RNO-Alania’s peacekeeping battalion travelling by a car with the JPKF identification marks, were stopped and then kidnapped at the illegal check-point in Bershueti. Without informing the JPKF headquarters about the incident Mr. Merabishvili’s subordinates drove the peacekeepers away from the zone of conflict to the town of Mtskheta, after having accused them of ‘illegal detainment of Georgian citizens’.
The ugly provocation against the Russian peacekeepers is openly accompanied by an extraordinary rotation of the Georgian peacekeeping battalion due on August 30, 2007 in violation of the requirements stipulated by the agreements adopted earlier on the rules of the rotation of the peacekeeping battalions’ personnel. The rotation practically coincides with the other illegal detention of the peacekeepers of the CIS Peacekeeping Collective Forces in the Georgian-Abkhaz zone of conflict.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on the Georgian side to strictly observe all commitments taken and, while warning them against further aggravating the situation firmly demands immediate release of the Russian peacekeepers, illegally detained.
Besides, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of South Ossetia once again draws the attention of the negotiators in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict resolution to the fact that the Georgian side is continuing to intensify the already critical situation, and states that regrettably, South Ossetia has to deal with an exceptionally aggressive, inadequate and hypocritical opponent as the present Georgian leadership is.
South Ossetia would like to draw the world community’s attention to the illegal and ever increasing presence of the Georgian Internal Ministry in the zone of conflict, which presents a threat to the region’s security and stability, and to the atrocious crimes committed by the Georgian law-supporters as a result of which 18 people have perished in South Ossetia since early 2007.
August 30, 2007
