The anger at the mining practices in Chiatura Municipality of Western Georgia has forced the residents of Shukruti village to hold successive six-month protests with extreme measures. Houses that have been preserved for generations, precious vineyards, and beautiful gardens have all been taken away from farmers due the practice of mining under private land. While the residents of the village put the blame on Georgian Manganese for these disaster, the company denies every claim.
The government has shielded the company, while law enforcement has prosecuted and fined those protesting to protect the right to private property and a clean and safe environment. While demonstrators plea for help, the company, state officials and pro-government media call them “radicals” who have received compensation and now want to “extort” additional funds from the company.
This article aims to provide some insights into the ongoing contentious case of the Shukruti locals’ protest.
Shukruti – A Village Sunk into the Ground
For years, Shukruti locals have called for help over what has happened in their village. Manganese mining in the area, like in more than a dozen villages in Chiatura Municipality, has been ongoing since the 1960s, during Soviet times. After Georgian Manganese acquired its mining license in 2006, the company operated only one functioning mine in Shukruti. However, since 2017, when the Georgian government transferred the company’s management to a state-appointed Special Manager, 13 more mines and two open-pit mining locations began operating.
In 2019, the impact of these activities on the environment of the village became apparent. Houses began to crack, some places in the village fell into the ground, the soil in most places lost its quality, etc. Because of this, the locals had to resort to many rounds of protests, including another six-month protest in 2021, which ended with negotiations and promises made by Georgian Manganese which the locals claim weren’t fulfilled.
On March 14, 2024, the residents of Shukruti started another series of rallies, this time in front of the Korokhnali and Shukruti mines. For almost 200 days, they have been camped outside the Korokhnali mine around the clock, sleeping in tents with their children. They claim that GM’s work under their houses has left the village without a solid foundation and that they are at risk of a disaster similar to what happened in Shovi and Itkhvisi.
On August 1, the Sachkhere District Court ordered three of the demonstrators – Giorgi Neparidze, Roman Megrelishvili and Malkhaz Labadze – to pay bail in the amount of GEL 1000 (approximately USD 370) for organized group action that disrupted the activities of an enterprise, based on an investigation launched by the Prosecutor General’s Office. LTD Magharoeli, which is owned by Georgian Manganese and operates the Shukruti mines, claimed that these individuals also deliberately disrupted the operation of the mine ventilation system on July 21, which could have caused “serious consequences”, a charge denied by all three.
On August 13, the same court banned 20 of the demonstrators from picketing the mines in protest after LTD Magharoeli opened a case against them on August 8. In this case, the company is also asking the court to order these 20 people to pay GEL 5.5 million (approximately USD 2.037 million) in compensation for the financial damage caused by their protest.
After the ban and the apparent lack of attention from the government, despite the demonstrators’ many calls for a meeting with the Prime Minister, the Shukruti residents decided to move their protest to Chorvila, the village of Bidzina Ivanishvili – the founder and Honorary Chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party. However, when they arrived in Chorvila on August 24, they were met by a large number of police and locals who prevented them from protesting.
On September 6, LTD Magharoeli fired three workers who participated in the protests – Giorgi Tsartsidze, Roman Megrelishvili and Malkhaz Labadze. The reason for the dismissal was the workers’ actions that “caused damage” to the company and stopped its activities; actions that “caused the company to lose trust” in the workers; and violation of the employment contract. Two months earlier, the company had also dismissed Giorgi Bitsadze and Jumber Tsutskiridze for the same reasons.
As September approached with the limited spotlight on the protests, due to the focus on elections, the residents of Shukruti decided to take extreme measures and five of the demonstrators sewed their mouths shut, announcing a hunger strike. On September 11, they also held an overnight demonstration in front of the Georgian Parliament in Tbilisi. The demonstrators held banners with writings “GD+GM=Destruction”; “We demand justice”; “Don’t destroy our houses, don’t turn us into IDPs”; “The issue of family purity and territorial integrity is being decided today in Shukruti.”
For the time being, this is the most recent development in this case.
Chiatura Management Company Denies Claims by Locals
The Chiatura Management Company, which has taken over the process management of mining locations in Chiatura since February 2024, denies all the claims made by the demonstrators. The Head of the Social Projects Department, Mirian Bichikashvili, shared a comment with Civil.ge in which he states that LTD Magharoeli has already paid out more than GEL 12 million (approximately USD 4.5 million) in compensation to the demonstrators, three times more than what was negotiated in 2021.
The company has also shared on social media the documents of bank transfers to prove their point, which the demonstrators claim are forged. The company states that people who have already received compensation in their and their family’s name include:
- Giorgi Neparidze – GEL 96,814 (approximately USD 35,857);
- Janiko Labadze – GEL 195,738 (approximately USD 72,495);
- Roman Megrelishvili – GEL 105,031 (approximately USD 38,900);
- Tamar Kupatadze – GEL 117,097 (approximately USD 43,369);
- Zviad Papidze – GEL 85,000 (approximately USD 31,481);
- Giorgi Bitsadze – GEL 26,094 (approximately USD 9,664);
- Amiran Shekiladze – GEL 88,099 (approximately USD 32,629).
The company also states that the compensation reserved for other residents will also be paid in time, following the order of compensating the most affected first and the least affected later.
The company also notes that “mining in the village of Shukruti began in the 1960s and continued until 1990. During the Soviet Union, underground mining was carried out in the village, which now causes the ground to collapse and cracks to appear in the houses. The Georgian Manganese Company has never worked in the territory of Shukruti”. The company also claims that underground mining didn’t take place even after 2020, when it signed a memorandum with the locals, giving the company permission to start mining on their territory.
As for why it decided to pay the compensation for something it says it didn’t cause, the company claims that the decision was made to “alleviate the socio-economic background” following pleas from the locals.
“It is obvious that the participants of the rally are members of a radical group that is trying to extort additional funds from the company through blackmail,” states Bichikashvili.
One of the persons, to whom allegedly the compensation was paid, Giorgi Naparidze told Netgazeti that he had not received any compensation and that the documents published by the company were forged. “Nikoloz Mirian Bichikashvili works in their compensation service, he was charged before with forging documents. They are waving some absurd documents that are forged,” he said.
The criminal case under Part 1 Article 221 of the Georgian Criminal Code against Mirian Bichikashvili was indeed initiated by the Investigative Service of the Ministry of Finance in the case of violation of licenses and permits by Georgian Manganese for attempting to falsify expert reports with bribes in 2016 when he was working as the company’s lawyer.
Naparidze also noted that only 5% of the locals have received compensation, but they believe that the auditing firm hired by GM didn’t properly assess the damages and determined them to be much lower than they actually were.
Commenting on the memorandum mentioned by the company, Neparidze stated: “None of the 45 families standing here signed this memorandum. SSSG representatives and the top officials of the company used some local drug addicts and misled the villagers. They asked, “Do you agree that the company should start compensating for the damages?” Everyone replied that they agreed. They took those signatures and put them on a completely different document, a memorandum.” He further claimed: “On this memorandum, there are signatures of people who were not in Georgia at the time of signing the memorandum, several people were dead…”
The Company and State Connections
Government officials claim that they are not involved in the current situation because it is a matter falling outside of their competence. On September 13 Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, told journalists that the government has studied the case and seen the documents published by the company, and believes that “for now it is the company’s responsibility to conduct negotiations.” However, there are many other versions as to why the government is not paying attention to the developments around the protests and resolving the issue at hand.
What is Georgian Manganese? The 100% owner of the company is LTD Georgian American Eloise (registered in Luxembourg), whose controlling package is owned by the former Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyy, with about 4% belonging to the Georgian group of shareholders, close to the ruling party. Notably, Kolomoyskyy is the founder of PrivatBank and the former governor of the Dnipro region of Ukraine. He has been sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for corruption in 2021. He is currently arrested in Ukraine for the murder of a lawyer in a corporate dispute and fraud.
GM obtained its mining license in 2006 for 40 years on 16 430 hectares of land in Chiatura. It is the largest employer in the municipality, with some sources estimating that about one-third of the families in Chiatura have a member employed by the company in one way or another.
The license held by GM is not public, but it is more powerful than any license issued from 2019 onwards, when a new regulation was adopted by the state requiring an open-pit mining project and a recultivation plan in order to obtain a license. This means that the company has no legal requirement to recultivate the open-pit mine locations, which in some places have been open for decades. Environmental activists also claim that the company has so much power that even if it decides to mine ore under the Chiatura Town Hall, it will have the full right to destroy the building and begin its activities.
There are more than a dozen villages in the same dire situation as Shukruti. Before 2017, there was active state control over the company’s activities and its impact on the environment, and it was even fined more than 400 million GEL for the damage it caused to the environment in Chiatura. However, in 2017, the Georgian government appealed to the court with a request to reshuffle the company’s management and appoint a Special Manager chosen by the state. The request was granted, the fine was waived, and the company’s management team lost almost all decision-making power.
Nikoloz Chikovani, a person closely associated with the Georgian Dream party, was appointed as the Special Manager. He had the main obligation from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia to implement a 14-point plan that would ensure that the environment would be cleaned up and protected from the company’s activities in the future. Chikovani was tasked with restarting GM’s production process in a way that would eliminate all the problems – soil degradation, destruction of the fertile layer, trees and bushes. The plan also envisaged cleaning up the Kvirila River (which is highly toxic and polluted due to the ores dumped there) and recultivating the open pits. However, despite two consecutive three-year terms, environmental experts believe that none of the 14 points have been implemented.
After the appointment of the Special Manager, the Department of Environmental Supervision altogether stopped sending experts to assess the environmental situation in Chiatura, leaving the responsibility for monitoring the Special Manager’s work in his own hands. In May 2023, the Tbilisi City Court extended the Special Management regime in the company and appointed Besik Kirtadze to the post. He was nominated by Chikovani and approved by the Ministry of Economy and Environmental Protection.
Currently, out of the 16 members of the governing team of the GM, 6 members are individuals who have donated large sums of money to the Georgian Dream party, including Special Manager Kirtadze.
What’s Next?
The Chiatura community is in an alarming state. The population is threatened by environmental disasters, most of them live in poverty and depend on state benefits to survive. According to the National Statistical Service of Georgia, in 2023 the population of Chiatura will be 37.3 thousand, almost 9 thousand less than in 2006 (the year GM acquired the license). The rate of natural increase has been negative for years, amounting to -159 people in 2023.
The Georgian constitution says these people and the environment they live in must be protected, but it seems the state isn’t committed to enforcing it:
Article 29 – Right to Environmental Protection
- Everyone has the right to live in a healthy environment and enjoy the natural environment and public space. Everyone has the right to receive full information about the state of the environment in a timely manner. Everyone has the right to care for the protection of the environment. The right to participate in the adoption of decisions related to the environment shall be ensured by law.
It is still unclear whether the company’s claims that it has already compensated the Shukruti protesters are true or not, but the fact is that the village of Shukruti, Itkhvisi and others in the Chiatura municipality are examples of how the wrong practices of manganese mining are ruining the environment and natural habitat of Georgia. These practices have created a situation where many more people are getting sick, have high levels of metal in their bodies, and are living in deteriorating conditions every day.
The effect is not limited to these areas, as the dirty water of the Kvirala River later flows into the Rioni River, which eventually reaches the Black Sea, with the metal-laden dust traveling much further than the village or region. Whatever the outcome of the Shukruti case, the state does not seem to be taking action to protect the property and environment of its citizens.
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian)
