The Meskhetians, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, experienced some of the worst atrocities at the hands of the Soviet government. In 1944, Joseph Stalin decided to deport them from Georgia because of their alleged collaboration with the Nazis. Sadly, after 64 years in exile, the Meskhetian issue is still on the international agenda.
Mamuka Khutsishvili, 44, and Osman Mehriev-Kuradze, 89, seem to have little in common. Mamuka, an engineer by profession, lives in Akhaltsikhe, the municipal town of south-western Georgia's Samtskhe-Javakheti region, where he runs a small business. Osman is a villager from Abastumani; he is now too old for cultivating vegetables, something he has done all his life.
What they do share is their ethnic origin. Both are Meskhetians.
Horrors of deportation
Osman was 25 when his family was driven out of their home. "It happened on 15 November 1944. The soldiers broke into our house at 3:00 am and ordered us to follow them, hardly giving us any time even to dress. We were all thrown into cattle trucks and traveled for 40 days without any food or warm clothes. I remember people ate grass for survival. Many died of hunger and infectious diseases. I saw soldiers throwing corpses from carriages. Ever since, I cannot recover from the nightmare of those days," Osman says as his eyes fill with tears.
Unlike other ethnic groups brutally expelled by the Stalinist regime, the Meskhetians were never allowed to return to their native land. In the final days of the Soviet Union many had to flee again, as inter-ethnic clashes and pogroms drove them out of their homes in parts of Central Asia.
The long road home
Large numbers of Meskhetians have settled in Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and other countries. Some, like Mamuka and Osman, have returned to their homeland. For thousands of Meskhetians, though, it remains a dream.
Mamuka lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and had a well-paid job but homesickness made him come back.
"When I got married and my children were born, I decided to return to my homeland while the kids were still very little. I myself was raised without any national history, heroes or values. I did not want my children to be deprived of them too."
The situation of the Meskhetians has long been the focus of the international community's attention. On joining the Council of Europe in 1999, Georgia undertook a commitment to facilitate the return of those Meskhetians who had been deported and their descendants. In parallel, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) and other international bodies have been working with third countries in order to make sure that the Meskhetians do not remain stateless.
"Not a tennis ball"
The position of the HCNM has always been steadfast: those Meskhetians who wish to return to Georgia should be able to do so at the earliest opportunity, on a voluntary basis and in conditions of dignity and security.
"I cannot emphasize the word 'voluntary' enough. Meskhetians resident in Russia, Azerbaijan and other countries have to be given the option of integration and naturalization in their host state," says the High Commissioner, Ambassador Knut Vollebaek.
"These people are not a tennis ball that countries can hit back and forth across a net of international borders. The plight of Meskhetians should finally end."
Repatriation legislation in place
In 2007, Georgia put in place an appropriate legal framework to facilitate the return of the Meskhetians. The law sets out the conditions that prospective returnees have to meet in order to be repatriated.
However, the legal text is "complicated and vague," says Temur Lomsadze, Director of International Foundation for the Support of Repatriation.
"An ordinary person will find it hard to make sense of its provisions. Besides, Meskhetians have difficulties in filling out applications in Georgian or English, as required by the law. All those willing to return have to submit documents by January 2009, so they are short of time as well. Despite all this, I think it is anyway a step forward that the Law on Repatriation has been adopted."
The International Foundation for the Support of Repatriation, assisted by the HCNM, has published a guide that explains in accessible language the procedures that the Law sets out. The 200-page document introduces the Meskhetians to Georgia, a country that differs dramatically from the place they were forced to abandon in 1944.
About 20,000 copies of the guide will be distributed by the international Meskhetian non-governmental organization Vatan and Georgian consulates to Meskhetians in Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It should help those willing to return to consider all the pros and cons.
The August war in Georgia has affected the plans of many prospective returnees. The HCNM has therefore proposed to the government to extend the January 2009 deadline.
Return to where?
Like elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, the question of return is complicated by the legacy of the Stalinist deportations. Most Meskhetians used to live in Samtskhe-Javakheti, a region of Georgia which is now home to an ethnic Armenian majority and was long neglected by successive central governments in the 1990s.
Many of those Meskhetians who wish to move to Georgia want to relocate to precisely the birthplace of their ancestors, Samtskhe-Javakheti. Economic hardship is no obstacle to their plans. Osman and his sons, for example, took out a loan to buy a house in their native village, Abastumani.
"This is the place where I was born and my ancestors are buried. Many other Meskhetians also wish to come here, to our original habitat. Justice will be restored once everyone is given an opportunity to return to Samtskhe-Javakheti," says Osman Kuradze.
Some, however, fear that the tangible improvement that Samtskhe-Javakheti has witnessed since 2003 could be put at risk by the unmanaged and massive return of the Meskhetians to the region.
High Commissioner Vollebaek believes the repatriation has to be carefully thought through and supported by international assistance.
"Only such an approach will ensure that inter-ethnic relations in Georgia are reinforced rather than undermined."
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