Proposing PACE to deal with the rights of Georgians

Russian-Georgian relations were at the center of the PACE session that opened yesterday in Strasbourg. Fulfilling the promise made in advance not to allow Mikheil Saakashvili’s first speech in PACE in nine years to become a “triumphant”, the Russian delegation proposed that the assembly investigate human rights violations during his presidency. According to experts, the initiative became a kind of counterbalance to the PACE discussion of the report “On the Humanitarian Consequences of the 2008 War between Georgia and Russia” scheduled for Wednesday, which was considered “politicized” in Moscow.

The main event of the opening of the PACE winter session was the speech of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili - the first since 2004. It was dedicated to Georgia's integration into the Euro-Atlantic space and its commitment to EU values. The President of Georgia did not ignore relations with the Russian Federation. Even before the opening of the session, he announced that Moscow was “doomed” to contacts with his United National Movement party, “which is not leaving politics anywhere and will be active in Georgia for a long time.”

However, Moscow sees a chance to improve relations with Tbilisi precisely in the victory of the opposition Georgian Dream coalition of Bidzina Ivanishvili in the last parliamentary elections. As the Russian delegation told Kommersant, in Strasbourg they will not focus on the most acute contradictions in Georgian-Russian relations. Deputy head of the delegation Leonid Slutsky yesterday even raised the issue of cooperation between the parliaments of the Russian Federation and Georgia. As the deputy himself explained to Kommersant, “for now we will only talk about the humanitarian dossier, but over time it will be possible to formulate a political agenda.”

The Russian delegation directed its harsh criticism mainly exclusively at the Georgian president. “If Saakashvili believes that his speech in PACE will be triumphant, then no, it won’t work,” the head of the Russian delegation, Alexei Pushkov, warned in advance. And yesterday he told Kommersant that after Saakashvili’s speech he raised the topic of human rights violations in Georgia and proposed preparing a separate report on it. “Behind the democratic façade in Georgia were hidden the grossest cases of human rights violations: violence against prisoners, persecution of the opposition, arrests. Saakashvili is personally responsible for this,” Mr. Pushkov explained to Kommersant. He is convinced that this will not negatively affect the prospects of bilateral relations, since “these questions are raised by the Georgian public itself.” Although Russian deputies almost always called reports on the human rights situation in the Russian Federation politically motivated, in the case of Georgia they deny that the topic they proposed was “a means of political struggle against the Saakashvili regime.”

However, experts believe that it was not without reason that the Russian delegation raised the Georgian topic on the first day of the session. A discussion of the report “On the humanitarian consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia in 2008” is scheduled for Wednesday in PACE. The document prepared by Swedish parliamentarian Tina Aketoft is dedicated to the humanitarian situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Russian delegation calls the text of the report “non-catastrophic” for Russia, but “politicized.” As Alexey Pushkov told Kommersant, the delegation will not vote for the resolution on the report, since the author calls the then unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia and the Republic of Abkhazia part of Georgia, and Moscow would like these territories to be designated as “conflict zones.” In this situation, yesterday's Russian proposal to prepare a report in PACE on human rights violations in Georgia can well be considered as a counterweight to Tina Aketoft's document.

Maria Efimova

Russia muted Mikheil Saakashvili's speech