Print this pageFor Immediate Release
September 8, 2000
(Georgian in PDF format)
Violent attacks on Jehovah’s Witnesses spread to western part of Republic of Georgia
On September 3, 2000, Jehovah’s Witnesses were attacked in two cities in the western part of the Republic of Georgia, Senaki and Kutaisi, according to Guram Kvaratskhelia, spokesman for the Witnesses. Members of the Senaki Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses were attacked by an armed group of men, and another Witness was beaten on a main street of Kutaisi by two policemen.
Yura Papava, a resident of Senaki, said that the congregation was meeting peacefully in his home when “suddenly a man entered the house and demanded to know what we were doing and what we were teaching. Without waiting for an answer, he and five or six other men started smashing the furniture.”
The intruders seized the presiding minister and burned him with a cigarette and head-butted him in the face, Papava said. When one of the attackers pulled out a gun, some of the women screamed and others tried to escape by jumping from a high window. Among the women who jumped for their lives was a 70-year-old. One woman remains bedridden as a result of injuries sustained in the jump, he said.
“We contacted the police,” Papava said. “But when they arrived they were of little help and began to abuse the attack victims with obscene language.”
On the same day, Vladimir Gabunia, a Georgian citizen living in Kutaisi, was attacked on the street by two traffic policemen. “I was walking down Nikea Street when one of two traffic police asked me to give him some of our literature,” Gabunia said. “When I gave him a magazine, he tore it apart in front of me. His partner punched me in the stomach, and when I doubled over to catch my breath, he took my remaining literature and tore it up. Then he took my two Bibles and put them in his car. They threatened to throw me in the Rioni River and forbade me to walk on the streets.”
These assaults come in the wake of numerous attacks in recent months on Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Gldani district of Tbilisi. On August 16 and 17, 2000, Orthodox extremists, followers of Basil Mkalavishvili, mounted an attack on people attending a trial at the Gldani-Nadzaladevi courthouse. The mob beat journalists, human rights leaders, and members of Jehovah’s Witnesses, including foreign observers. “It seems that the use of violence to express religious intolerance is being given free reign in Georgia,” Kvaratskhelia said. “Victims of violence are being denied protection and abandoned without recourse to legal remedies.”
Contact: J. R. Brown, telephone: (718) 560-5600