President Mikheil Saakashvili and Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili talked tough on Abkhazia and vowed, in flamboyant and emotional speeches on September 11, to unite Georgia “soon.” The President and the Defense Minister both slammed their opponents for, as they put it, “planting seeds of hopelessness” among the people.
Saakashvili and Okruashvili were speaking at a forum which gathered thousands of “Young Patriots” – a group of teenagers from all over Georgia who spent their summer in state-sponsored camps in different parts of the country. These summer camps were called “Patriot Camps” and aimed, as the organizers said, at boosting a patriotic spirit among the youth. About 11,000 participants of, as organizers also call it, “the President’s Program” gathered in the Sport Palace in Tbilisi on September 11 at a forum dubbed the “Patriots are Coming.”
Activists from the ruling National Movement party and officials, as well as President Saakashvili himself, were regular visitors at these camps. The initiative was widely publicized by the authorities through media sources during the summer. The forum on September 11 was even broadcast live by all the leading TV stations.
Georgia’s reunification was in a focus at this forum. Songs about Abkhazia, which included the lyrics “Sukhumi [Abkhaz capital] you are everything to me” were performed and the slogan “Victory to a United Georgia” were chanted.
“Our Promised Land is a united Georgia [encompassing] its old borders; Georgia with borders which include Psou [the river which serves as the border between Abkhazia and Russia] and the Roki Tunnel [linking South Ossetia with Russia]… We will unite Georgia through peaceful means,” Saakashvili said.
Saakashvili blamed, as he put it, Georgian “traitors” for the country’s defeat in the armed conflict which took place in Abkhazia in 1993, after which Georgian troops were forced to withdraw from the region. “We will not let this kind of treason [exist] any more,” the Georgian President said.
Saakashvili also said that there still are many “cynics and pessimists” in Georgia who permanently criticize the government. “OK, criticize us, but what can you do, what can you do yourself to improve something?” Saakashvili said.
“These people often tell us that we should apologize to the Abkhazians. Apologize for what? For expelling 250,000 people [Georgians] out of Abkhazia [in 1993]? Where is the truth? We are on the side of truth and not on the side of capitulators,” the Georgian President stated.
Saakashvili urged the participants of the forum to become “preachers of patriotism among other young people” in order to “root out” pessimism and cynicism.
In his speech, Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili also focused on Abkhazia and said that he recently covertly spent several days in the breakaway region. Organizers of the forum explained Okruashvili’s presence at the event by noting that military-style trainings were included in the schedule of activities in the “Patriot Camps.”
“I was in Abkhazia several days ago, together with several soldiers. I stayed there for several days. I was sleeping in the forest there. And I vowed, while being there, that none of us will walk on our territory as partisans any more. The time will come soon, time when we return Abkhazia,” Okruashvili said, without specifying where exactly in Abkhazia he was, or what exactly the purpose of this covert visit was.
“But there are still people in Georgia who try to plant seeds of hopelessness; these people, I mainly refer to our opposition, say that serving in the army is wasting one’s time and say that Georgia should not buy new arms… We are a warrior nation and if not for this ability we would have been destroyed… We have no right not to unite Georgia,” Irakli Okruashvili said.
He also said that he is happy that a patriotic spirit is growing among the country’s youth. “Two years ago many of you were frustrated… But unity gave us the force [necessary]to stage the Rose Revolution, which opened a new page in your life… No generation since Davit the Builder [the Georgian kind who united the country 900 years ago] had such a perfect chance in Georgia to build a successful nation; you have it,” Okruashvili added.
Organizers of the “Patriot Camp” say that next year the number of participants of the program will be increased.
Although this new movement of “young patriots” in Georgia has no structure and has no leader, it resembles one that was set up in Russia this spring – a pro-Putin youth movement called Nashi – Our People – which also aims at boosting patriotism among the younger generations.
