Legal fight against Russia part of Govt’s peaceful reintegration policy - Vice PM
Thea Tsulukiani served as the country’s Justice Minister between 2012-2020. Photo: Government press office
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Thea Tsulukiani, the Georgian Vice Prime Minister, on Thursday said the Government’s legal fight against Russia in international courts was part of its policy to reintegrate the Russian-occupied Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) regions peacefully.
In her press comments, the official stressed the Government's “irreversible” stance on peaceful reintegration since it took office in 2012, noting the domestic public would “never tolerate” occupation, annexation or loss of the territories.
She noted the Government had ensured legal victories against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court in cases on circumstances before, during and after the 2008 war between the two countries, adding the outcomes would benefit the Government's peaceful approach to the regions.
[The regions] must and will be reintegrated only peacefully”, Tsulukiani noted.
Hailing Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s messages at the European Political Community Summit in Moldova on Thursday as “the best”, Tsulukiani said the Government head had presented himself as a “proud leader of a proud country” that had regained its independence in the 1990s “at the cost of blood” before building its sovereignty and was striving for membership in the European Union.
She also highlighted the Government was working on the implementation of the 12-point conditions outlined by the bloc last year for granting its membership candidate status to Georgia, with the decision expected in December.
Tsulukiani claimed the public and the country “deserve” a positive decision on the membership status “both in case of a merit-based, and a political decision” by EU bodies.
“We are looking forward with great patience to the day when the bloc will make the only right decision on the status”, the Vice PM said, noting it was “important” the PM had received verbal support on the status from Western partners while in Moldova.
The “only correct political decision” in “this difficult geopolitical” situation will be to grant Georgia European Union membership candidate status, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili told the European leaders on Thursday at the European Political Community Summit in Moldova’s capital city of Chișinău. He noted his colleagues agreed that not granting the status to the country would be “another injustice and a big strategic mistake”.
The recent conclusion of the International Criminal Court on Russia-Georgia 2008 conflict “has confirmed” Georgian troops had acted “in full accordance” with international law during the war, Beka Dzamashvili, the Deputy Justice Minister of Georgia said on Friday, in response to the completion of the ICC investigation opened in 2016.
Georgia has won all 3,300 complaints filed against it following the 2008 war with Russia to the European Court of Human Rights over potential violations and crimes committed during the conflict, Justice Minister Rati Bregadze said on Friday.
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has announced its judgment today in the case of Georgia v. Russia, regarding the arrest, detention and collective expulsion of Georgian nationals from Russia in the autumn of 2006.