De-facto Abkhazia announces curfew in Gali
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Local authorities have announced a curfew in breakaway Abkhazia’s Gali district.
Gali district is now the only district of Abkhazia with ethnic Georgians constituting clear majority. From 40,000 to 60,000 refugees have returned to Gali district since 1998, including persons commuting daily across the ceasefire line and those migrating seasonally in accordance with agricultural cycles.
The de-facto Abkhazian regime said there was an increasing number of criminal cases in Gali so the decision to announce a curfew aimed to solve this problem.
Gali district had a new de-facto head of the Administration. Temur Danelia, who was an Abkhazian war veteran, said he had never worked as a politician and he was a military serviceman so he considered his appointment to the new role as a military task.
"When I talked to the [de-facto] President and the [de-facto] Interior Minister, we discussed a curfew as a solution to the increasing number of criminal cases in Gali,” Danelia said.
Meanwhile, representatives of Abkhazia’s legitimate Government said this decision aimed to isolate Gali as it was mainly inhibited by ethnic Georgians. Acting chair of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia Vakhtang Kolbaia believed such a decision would worsen the living conditions of Gali residents.
He said announcing the curfew in Gali, a bordering region between Georgia and breakaway Abkhazia was Russia’s one more attempt to annex Georgia’s breakaway region.
Experts said Abkhazia’s de-facto Government did not have enough forces to handle the curfew in the region so Russian soldiers, who were located there, would control the situation in Gali.
On another note, the Kremlin suggested de-facto Abkhazia should help to reconstruct Babushera Airport.
Babushera Airport, situated 20km away from capital Sokhumi, stopped operating in 1993. Today, Moscow offered Sokhumi to rebuild the airport and launch direct flights to Moscow.
However, experts said since Babushera had no international accreditation, no international airline companies were likely to start operating there.