Sokhumi, Tskhinvali Reject Tbilisi’s Offer on Human Rights Missions
Tskhinvali and Sokhumi rejected on May 4 any prospect of even considering Tbilisi’s proposal on setting up international missions in the breakaway regions to monitor human rights situation there.
Temur Iakobashvili, the Georgian state minister for reintegration, said on May 3 after meeting with Council of Europe (CoE) Human Rights Commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg, in Tbilisi that the Georgian side proposed to establish, possibly under the CoE aegis, human right mission “to monitor and react” on human rights abuses there.
“It is Georgia, not Abkhazia which needs such international human rights monitoring missions,” Apsnipress reported quoting breakaway Abkhazia’s foreign minister, Maxim Gvinjia, on May 4.
David Sanakoev, breakaway South Ossetian leader’s special envoy for human rights, said it was not up to Tbilisi to take decisions about opening missions and institutions in Tskhinvali.
Tbilisi was insisting on opening of UN human rights office – similar to the one which was operating in Sokhumi – in the Gali district of breakaway Abkhazia, predominantly populated by ethnic Georgians, before the August war.
Although no such office was established in Gali, in early 2007 UN human rights office in Sokhumi appointed an international human rights officer in the Gali district. UN closed down its mission in Abkhazia about year after the August, 2008 war.
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