Author: Emma Jilavian

The Georgian ambas­sador to Azer­bai­jan has been summoned to the Azer­bai­jani Foreign Ministry after reports emerged that a statue of an ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh war veteran was renovated in a Georgian village. Azer­bai­jan called on Georgia to ‘take urgent measures’, while Georgia’s Foreign Ministry told OC Media that ‘making a scandal out of this is unac­cept­able’.

On 20 January, the renovated statue of Nagorno-Karabakh war veteran Mikhail Avagyan was unveiled in his native village of Bughasheni, in southern Georgia’s Akhal­ka­la­ki Munic­i­pal­i­ty, which is mostly populated by ethnic Armenians.

According to local news website Jnews, the statue, which has been standing in the village for around 22 years, was renovated and unveiled at a ceremony by Avagyan’s children and grand­chil­dren.

‘When the war began in Nagorno-Karabakh, Mikhail Avagyan par­tic­i­pat­ed in the hos­til­i­ties in Horadiz, Khojali, Hadrut, and Fizuli and became known as the “Cobra” because he knew Azer­bai­jani, which helped him in recon­nais­sance’, Jnews wrote, adding that he was wounded by a sniper during battle and died on the way to the hospital.

The bust’s opening ceremony was attended by Armenian ambas­sador to Georgia Ruben Sadoyan, who cut the red ribbon. It was also attended by the the mayor of Akhal­ka­la­ki and the chairman of city council, as well as Georgian MPs Enzel Mkoyan and Samvel Manukyan, both ethnic Armenians.

On 24 January, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the bust of Avagyan, accusing him of par­tic­i­pat­ing in ‘the occu­pa­tion of Azer­bai­jani lands’.

The statement said Azerbaijan’s ambas­sador to Georgia had visited the Georgian Foreign Ministry to draw attention to the issue.

‘At the same time, the Georgian ambas­sador to our country was invited to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where there was a demand to take urgent measures to eliminate this devel­op­ment, which does not cor­re­spond to the spirit of bilateral strategic part­ner­ships between our countries’, the Azer­bai­jani Foreign Ministry said.

The day the statue was unveiled, 20 January, is a day of mourning in Azer­bai­jan, known as ‘Black January’. On 20 January 1990, over a hundred mostly ethnic Azer­bai­jani civilians were killed in a Soviet crackdown on the civilian pop­u­la­tion of Baku.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said the crackdown was necessary in order to stop violence against ethnic Armenians in the city, while many in Azer­bai­jan assert that this was only a pretext to suppress the Azer­bai­jani inde­pen­dence movement.

Georgian MP from the ruling Georgian Dream party, Gia Volski, said there was ‘an attempt to make a scandal’ out of the devel­op­ments.

‘We should care about our citizens and make sure they don’t have conflict. There is now an awkward situation inter­na­tion­al­ly, but diplomacy exists to ease such sit­u­a­tions’, Volski told jour­nal­ists.

Giorgi Baramidze, a member of the oppo­si­tion United National Movement Party, said Georgia should make sure its relations with both Azer­bai­jan and Armenia remain secure.

‘We have a gov­ern­ment and we have a state security service which must make sure no hearth of con­fronta­tion is ignited’, Baramidze told oppo­si­tion-leaning TV channel Rustavi 2.

Zaur Khalilov, the director of the Civil Inte­gra­tion Foun­da­tion, an organ­i­sa­tion that helps ethnic minori­ties in Georgia integrate, told OC Media the Georgian gov­ern­ment must maintain neu­tral­i­ty in the conflict and take on a role in building peace.

‘Evidently, there are attempts to ignite con­fronta­tion between ethnic Azer­bai­ja­nis and Armenians living in Georgia’, he said.

‘Who came up with the idea of ren­o­vat­ing and opening the statue on 20 January? I don’t know what to blame it on — ignorance or a delib­er­ate provo­ca­tion? […] Azer­bai­jan took it as an insult because the opening was held on 20 January’, he told OC Media.

He said that Georgian officials tend to look at ethnic minori­ties only from a security viewpoint, and fears that this par­tic­u­lar case may lead to anti-Armenian sen­ti­ments.

‘It’s a fact that [these devel­op­ments] are harmful for Georgia. What will [Georgian officials] do if Azer­bai­jan asks for the sculpture to be demol­ished? And if they do demolish it, this will auto­mat­i­cal­ly trigger a reaction from Armenia’, Khalilov said.

Arnold Stepanyan, who chairs Multi-Ethnic Georgia, an organ­i­sa­tion working to bridge gaps between ethnic, religious, and lin­guis­tic groups in Georgia, echoed Khalilov’s sen­ti­ments.

Stepanyan told OC Media that ‘there’s an attempt to instigate hostility between ethnic Armenians and Azer­bai­ja­nis residing in Georgia’.

‘This is a very sad fact. There are certain people who are always trying to ignite con­fronta­tions — to spread the con­fronta­tion between Azer­bai­jan and Armenian to Georgia’, said Stepanyan.

Enzel Mkoyan, the ethnic Armenian MP from the Georgian Dream party who attended the unveiling of the memorial, told OC Media he attended the ceremony because he was invited by his elec­torate, to whom he could not say no.

‘I didn’t expect there would be such tensions. My elec­torate invited me as their majori­tar­i­an [MP]. I couldn’t refuse their invi­ta­tion. I went there and attended it’, said Mkoyan.

Asked what the solution regarding Azerbaijan’s demands could be, Mkoyan told OC Media he did not know.

‘I can’t answer this. I want a peaceful solution’, he said.