40 graves to be exhumed in occupied Abkhazia to identify victims of armed conflict of 1992-93
If the remains are identified, they will be handed over to their families. More than 26 years will have passed since the war. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
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Forty graves will be exhumed in Georgia’s occupied region of Abkhazia in the west of the country to take DNA samples and to try to identify the individuals buried there, reports the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
If the remains are identified, they will be handed over to their families. More than 26 years will have passed since the war.
ICRC experts plan to begin work on June 19 and will exhume more than 40 gravesites by September.
An agreement was reached with the ICRC to begin exhuming bodies in order to provide answers for the families of missing people in 2010.
Since 2010, 430 sets of human remains have been recovered, of which 163 have been identified and handed over to families after their remains were identified.
Local specialists archeologists and anthropologists have been participating for three years in the excavation and exhumation process.
- Since the 1992-1993 Abkhaz conflict, about 1,500 ethnic Georgians remain missing. Another 200 are ethnic Abkhaz and 100 are ethnic Ossetians.
Thirty-six graves are planned to be opened in Georgia’s occupied Abkhazia region, in western Georgia this year to take DNA samples and try to identify the individuals.
The bodies of 12 people who went missing as a result of the military conflicts of the 1990s in Georgia have been laid to rest. Seven of them were fighters, one was a volunteer and four were civilians.
The legitimate Government of Abkhazia, which is in exile in Tbilisi, will now be headed by Ruslan Abashidze, replacing Vakhtang Kolbaia. Abashidze was the First Deputy State Minister for Reconciliation and Civic Equality of Georgia since January 2019.
The Government of Georgia has proposed legislative changes for improving the humanitarian, social and economic conditions of the populations in Georgia’s Russian-occupied regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia).
The aim of the initiative is to improve cooperation across the occupation line.