Month: September 2024
Artwork by Sophia Tabatadze. #GeorgianArt pic.twitter.com/Q0VTtRN9YG
— Notes from Georgia/South Caucasus (Hälbig, Ralph) (@SouthCaucasus) September 13, 2024
Elections in Russia
By Zhenya Snezhkina, “Medianetwork”
From September 6 to 8, elections took place across 21 regions of Russia. Citizens voted for governors, filled vacant seats in the Moscow City Duma and State Duma in three single-member districts, and chose local parliaments in 11 regions. According to sources, these elections served as a rehearsal for the 2026 State Duma elections. By then, all mechanisms of election fraud are expected to be fully refined and operate flawlessly, which means that all participants in the electoral process faced pressure and manipulation.
Technology serving fraud
The evolution of problems with electronic voting in Moscow reveals that as the use of the Remote Electronic Voting (REV) system expands, the methods of manipulation become more sophisticated. With each new election cycle, suspicions of large-scale fraud grow, casting doubt on the reliability and transparency of the system.
2019
The REV system was launched in record time—just six months—a very short period for such a complex technology. Even during the testing phase, issues were identified, many of which remained unresolved. During the Moscow City Duma elections, the system was used in three of the 45 electoral districts, and the electronic voting results differed significantly from the in-person voting results. Pro-government candidates received far more votes online, raising the first suspicions of fraud.
2020
During the vote on constitutional amendments, new problems emerged. Journalists discovered that in Moscow, someone was massively registering accounts with the personal data of pensioners on the mos.ru platform to boost the number of votes in favor of the amendments. This further intensified criticism and suspicions of manipulation.
2023
During the Moscow mayoral elections, a major technical failure occurred, which many believe benefited the pro-government candidate, Sergey Sobyanin. On the first day of voting, many voters were unable to cast their votes, either online or at polling stations. There were issues with receiving SMS confirmations on the online platform, and some voters couldn’t vote at the stations because their votes had supposedly already been registered in the REV system. These problems raised doubts about the fairness of the election.
2024
For the first time in Russia, electronic voting was used at the federal level during the presidential elections. In Moscow, 71 percent of voters took advantage of this option, while 15 percent did so in 28 other regions. Suspicions of widespread fraud also surfaced at the federal level. This revealed that manipulations were possible not only within Moscow’s REV system but also on the federal platform developed by Rostelecom, deepening concerns among the public and experts.
Persecution of candidates and their teams
As the elections approached, candidates increasingly faced severe obstacles that hindered their participation in the political process. Russian authorities employed a wide range of pressure tactics.
Law enforcement agencies, under various pretexts, conducted searches in the homes of candidates, their offices, and even the premises of campaign staff. Candidates could be detained for questioning, making it difficult for them to participate in the elections.
Candidates are required to submit documents for registration in the election. In some cases, authorities deliberately create barriers, such as closing the doors of election commissions or refusing to accept documents. As a result, not every candidate is able to participate in the vote.
If the authorities do not want certain candidates to run, they may revoke their registration for formal or questionable reasons. For instance, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Yabloko party was unable to register its candidates because the authorities found errors in their paperwork.
Pressure on voters
Russian authorities also used various methods to influence voters and sway the election results.
For instance, state media outlets did not publish information about candidates who were not supported by the authorities, limiting these candidates’ ability to communicate their ideas to the electorate.
As stated in a report by the All-Russian Civic Movement for the Protection of Voters’ Rights “Golos“, government agencies tried to block posts or social media accounts of those who criticized the authorities or supported opposition candidates. This made it harder for people to access information about the elections and candidates.
Administrative pressure was a well-tested method used by regional authorities, ranging from forcing employees or students to vote for certain candidates, to surveillance of voters and ballot-stuffing.
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.
Categories
121 Ergneti IPRM Meeting
On September 12, the 121th Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism meeting was held in Ergneti (in the vicinity of the Tskhinvali occupation line). The meeting was co-facilitated by the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus, Viorel Moşanu, and the Head of the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM), Bettina Patricia Boughani. The meeting comes amid reports of continued illegal “borderization” by the Russian occupation forces.
EUMM Statement
According to the EUMM statement, the participants “discussed challenges faced by the conflict-affected populations, in particular ‘borderization’ activities, restrictions to their freedom of movement, as well as incidents and the overall security situation on the ground.”
During the meeting, both co-facilitators voiced concern over the “continued practice of detentions and advocated for the release of all detainees” and also noted that “the full re-opening of crossing points would benefit women, men, children, and elderly people on both sides of the Administrative Boundary Line.”
The EUMM said that the participants “acknowledged the effective cooperation on irrigation, highlighting the crucial role of the EUMM hotline in enabling swift and accurate information exchange on water levels and resolving related issues,” expressing gratitude to the EUMM monitoring water levels throughout the irrigation season. The co-facilitators emphasized the importance of further advancing work in this regard, including through technical meetings.
“The participants agreed to convene the next regular IPRM meeting on 12 November 2024. Additionally, a separate technical meeting on irrigation and access to water will be convened in November to review lessons from the past irrigation season and plan for future work,” the EUMM statement said.
Statement by SSSG
The SSSG issued a statement, according to which the representatives of the Georgian government raised the issue of the illegally detained persons with “particular strictness.”
“The facts of so-called borderization and other illegal activities carried out at the occupation line were strictly condemned. A discussion was held on the humanitarian needs of the local indigenous population living along the occupation line and the possibilities of their solution,” the SSSG said in the statement.
SSSG Comment
Following the meeting, the Deputy Director of the Analytical Department of the State Security Service of Georgia (SSSG), Irakli Antadze told journalists there were eight cases of illegal “borderization” in the period since the last IPRM Ergneti meeting in July, which were discussed in “detail” at the meeting. Also, according to him, there were six instances of illegal detentions during the same period.
In response to a question about the reduction of information published by the SSSG on developments around the occupation line, Antadze explained that five out of six cases of illegal detentions were not disclosed “to protect the best interests” of the illegally detained persons. He said that the reduction of information had nothing to do with the upcoming Parliamentary elections in Georgia.
He also announced that a Georgian citizen illegally detained by the occupation forces, Lasha Khetereli would be released on September 13. Khetereli was illegally detained in July last year. Another nine citizens of Georgia remain in illegal custody.
Statement by Tskhinvali Representative
The de-facto Tskhinvali once again demanded the removal of Tsnelisi-Chorchana police checkpoint. “As a rule, we mention this post every time. Negotiations on this are underway, and I want to say that they are quite difficult. However, we have no right not to talk about this problem. We will make sure that this illegal police post is removed from the South Ossetian territory,” Moscow-backed Tskhinvali representative Igor Kochiev said.
According to the de-facto authorities, the discussion also touched upon the issue of UAVs. He said: “When we report a UAV’s flight through the hotline and the Georgian side attempts to identify it, the drone either leaves South Ossetian airspace or lands, possibly in Georgian territory, making it quite challenging to confirm the fact of the flight.” He added that “it is indirectly confirmed that the UAVs belong to the Georgian side, as the Georgian segment of social networks is full of photos of South Ossetian territory,” claiming that the photos are taken from the Georgian government controlled territory.
This article was updated on September 13 at 17:18 to reflect the positions of the SSSG and the de-facto Tskhinvali authorities.
