By Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi, exclusively to VK
The coalition of non-commercial organizations ‘Georgian Armenian Community’ recently addressed the city government of Tbilisi asking permission to install a monument to the victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. According to this community, the Armenian ethnic minority is second largest in Georgia and the largest one in Tbilisi, but despite their numerous requests this monument hasn’t been installed yet.
Tbilisi mayor’s office told VK that such an appeal isn’t the first one and is unlikely to be the last. According to our interlocutor, who preferred to remain anonymous, the Tbilisi authorities have great respect for all ethnic groups living in the city and they try to fulfil their cultural needs as quickly as possible. However, the monument question is a political one. “We can’t comply with this demand as it would cause inter-ethnic tension: not only tens of thousands of Armenians live in Tbilisi, but also tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis, and they have quite a different perspective as far as those events are concerned”.
Previously, the Tbilisi authorities preferred not give any official response to such demands by the Armenian community at all, giving only a verbal refusal. It seems that this is what is going to happen this time as well. But the Armenian organizations will return to this issue in the future. A few years ago the Armenian community tried to initiate an ‘Armenian Genocide’ issue discussion in Parliament. When the Parliament refused to put this question on its agenda, one of the MPs, an ethnic Armenian, asked his colleagues to honour the memory of the genocide victims with a moment of silence – the incident ended in a fight between Armenian and Azeri members of the Georgian Parliament.
It is also interesting that this new appeal to the Tbilisi administration was made at the time when the Armenian community activated its efforts in the region of Javakhetia and sent and its envoy to Brussels. At the same time, a group of US congressmen addressed the White House and asked it to increase American help to the region of Javakhetia. One of the congressmen, democrat Bred Sherman, pointed out that Georgia gets $68 million of its help and assures the US that it will promote the healthy development of the Javakhetia region.
Of course, it would be absurd for the Georgian government to decline financial help. In the framework of the ‘Millennium Challenges’ program the US government financed the construction of the strategically important highway joining Javakheti and Tbilisi through the region of Tsalka, populated by Armenians. According to the Georgian president, this and other similar projects will promote the integration of Georgia's Southern regions. So the optimism of the Georgian government towards the United States’ benefactory agenda is quite understandable, even though this help might be lobbied by certain non-Georgian groups.
Tbilisi is confident that Armenia won’t dare to spoil its relations with Georgia in the current geopolitical situation and use the diaspora to promote separatist tendencies in Javakhetia. And it seems that there’s some solid evidence for such an opinion, however, the signals coming from Armenia are quite controversial. For example, Armenia has all of a sudden established diplomatic relations with the state of Tuvalu – and this state in the Pacific basin has never been heard of in the region before it recognized the independence of the Georgian breakaway republics. Armenia hasn’t recognize Abkhazia or South Ossetia (or, for that matter, Nagorno-Karabakh), but established relations with a state that recognizes them – even though it has never thought to do so before, in all the 20 years of its independent existence. This doesn’t change anything officially, but it still is a disturbing signal.
