RFE/RL: Amendments To Citizenship Law Compound Political Tensions In Abkhazia
posted by circassiankama on August, 2009 as Abkhazia
August 07, 2009
Amendments To Citizenship Law Compound Political Tensions In Abkhazia
Meeting in emergency session on August 6, days after the official closure of the spring session, the Abkhaz parliament voted
unanimously to ask President Sergei Bagapsh not to sign into law
amendments the parliament enacted six days earlier to the law on
citizenship passed in November 2005.
The opposition had
protested those amendments, arguing that extending Abkhaz citizenship
to the overwhelmingly Georgian population of Abkhazia's southernmost
Gali Raion opens the door to a new wave of Georgian "colonization."
Bagapsh has established
a commission that will assess the draft amendments and rule by August
10 on whether they create a threat to Abkhaz statehood. The parliament
committee on legislation will then revise them as deemed appropriate.
The
controversial amendments were approved on July 31 by a vote of 20 in
favor and 11 against, with one abstention. They defined as qualifying
for Abkhaz citizenship all ethnic Abkhaz, regardless of their place of
residence, even if they are citizens of another country. Also eligible,
provided that they have not renounced their Abkhaz citizenship in
written form, are persons who at the time of the October 1999
referendum endorsing the constitution adopted in 1994 had lived without
interruption in Abkhazia for a minimum of five years.
The
provision to which the opposition took exception, however, affirmed the
right to Abkhaz citizenship of those former Georgian residents of Gali
who fled during the 1992-93 war and who prior to the passage of the
2005 citizenship law accepted the Abkhaz authorities' 1999 invitation
to return; those Georgians must, however, give up Georgian citizenship
in the event that they had acquired it. (The 2005 citizenship law
provides only for dual Abkhaz-Russian citizenship.)
Of the
estimated 55,000 Georgians currently registered as living in Gali, only
4,000 have formally applied for Abkhaz citizenship.
Opposition
deputy Daur Arshba was quoted on August 1 as claiming that the
amendments did not take into account recommendations made by the
parliament's committee on legislation. A second opposition deputy,
Valery Bganba, argued that the amendments are discriminatory insofar as
they do not extend to Greeks, Armenians, and members of other ethnic
groups who fled Abkhazia during the 1992-93 war the same right to
Abkhaz citizenship as they give the Georgians.
Also on August
1, three opposition groups -- the Forum of National Unity and the war
veterans' organizations Aruaa and Akhyatsa -- issued a joint statement
denouncing the amendments as granting equal rights to "those who fought
for Abkhazia's independence and those who for years served Georgia's
colonial interests."
They calculated that the number of
Georgians who now qualify for Abkhaz citizenship is equal to the number
of Abkhaz who already hold it. They further claim that those Georgians
will not be required to renounce their Georgian citizenship in order to
obtain Abkhaz passports.
The statement accused the parliament
of ignoring the potential dangerous consequences of those provisions,
which they argued "lay the foundations for a new wave of colonization
of Abkhazia by Georgians and for a prolonged period of internal
confrontation." They suggested that the sole rationale for the
amendments was that President Bagapsh cannot be certain he will be
reelected in the election due in December and is therefore seeking to
win Georgian votes.
Four days later, on August 5, the same three
opposition groups convened a demonstration in Sukhumi that was attended
by some 300 people, including Bagapsh's defeated rival in the 2004
presidential ballot, Raul Khadjimba, and those opposition parliament
deputies who on July 31 voted against the draft amendments. Addressing
that demonstration, Arshba argued that given the level of corruption in
Abkhazia, anyone who wants to "buy" Abkhaz citizenship will now be free
to do so, and he called on Bagapsh to veto the amendments.
The
demonstration participants subsequently made their way to parliament
and disrupted a press briefing by parliament speaker Nugzar Ashuba.
There was a heated exchange, during which the opposition deputies
accused their colleagues who had voted on July 31 in favor of the
amendments of betraying national interests.
Ashuba in turn
accused the opposition of trying to destabilize the political situation
in the run-up to the December ballot. He said the parliament will not debate the revised version of the amendments before the election.
Bagapsh has made no public comment on the contretemps. The opposition has criticized him repeatedly in recent months, first for purportedly making unwarranted concessions to Russia, and then for remarks he made
in an interview last month with the Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy
on the prospects that more countries might recognize Abkhazia as an
independent state.
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