South Ossetia has filed 3,300 individual complaints to the European Court of Human Rights in connection with the events of 2008, the Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic, Inal Tasoev, told reporters on Friday.
“The allegations concerned a number of violations of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. They detail how our citizens were exposed to mortal danger, how the bombing of residential areas took place. The fact that people were facing how their property was destroyed. All this was described and submitted to the Strasbourg court on human rights. The complaints were filed between August 14 and November 2008. In their claims, our citizens demand compensation for material and moral damage from the Georgian authorities, as well as the recognition of their offenses, "said Tasoev.
However, he said that half of the complaints had been rejected by the court.
“The process in the European court is this: complaints have been filed, they are examined there, and if any questions arise, they send requests to the representatives. And it turned out that these requests did not reach the representatives in time, naturally, they did not answer them in time, and the court found that the applicants had lost interest in the allegations. One of the main reasons was that they rejected about 1,500 complaints and were recognized as the so-called strikes, "said the Human Rights Ombudsman.
Tasoev has noted that the European court considered several complaints only after 10 years and declared them inadmissible.
“In November 2018, the European court examined seven complaints and declared them, unfortunately, inadmissible.The main motivation was that, where the complainants lived, they were not exposed to any mortal danger. We hope that in the near future the court will consider the other claims. Lawyers have already taken up the applications that were rejected. They studied them and, based on these decisions, are going to provide additional evidence to give the court less space if they want to refuse again, "he stressed.
