MINELRES: Caucasus Reporting Service No. 145: Georgian Azeris Locked out by Language

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WELCOME TO IWPR'S CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 145, September 5, 
2002.

CAUCASUS NEWS UPDATE SEPTEMBER 5

SHEVARDNADZE'S HIGH RISK GAME IN PANKISI The decision to send Georgian
security and police forces into the Pankisi Gorge may have been
unavoidable, but it carries serious risks. By Jaba Devdariani in Tbilisi

AZERI PRESS FEARS NEW SECRETS DECREE Journalists in Azerbaijan see press
regulations brought in at the end of August as a new form backdoor
censorship. By Kamal Ali in Baku

GEORGIAN AZERIS LOCKED OUT BY LANGUAGE Controversial new language
legislation may further isolate Georgia's 300,000-strong Azerbaijani
minority. By Zaza Baazov in Marneuli

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GEORGIAN AZERIS LOCKED OUT BY LANGUAGE

Controversial new language legislation may further isolate Georgia's
300,000-strong Azerbaijani minority.

By Zaza Baazov in Marneuli

Vagif, a 34-year-old Azerbaijani from the small southern Georgian town
of Marneuli, is by local standards a prosperous man. His house has a
sheet iron roof with a large antenna, and inside his children watch
Cartoon Network, just like their counterparts all over the world.

But Vagif is worried about his life and the future and asks for his
surname not to be used. "If (President) Shevardnadze steps down
tomorrow, the Azerbaijanis who live in Georgia, will be seriously
worried about their security," he said. Most of the current opposition
to the head of state seems to be either pro-Armenian or Georgian
nationalist, he added.

On top of their purely political worries, this ethnic community has a
more basic problem: almost all of Georgia's Azerbaijanis do not speak
Georgian and have few opportunities to learn it. The linguistic
isolation of such a large group could be storing up as yet unforeseen
problems for Georgia, especially if a new draft law on the Georgian
language is voted through parliament later this year.

Georgia has around 300,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis, most living in villages
in the southern region of Kvemo Kartli, not far from the capital
Tbilisi, and near the borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan.

One reason for the region's strong local identity is that it is largely
economically self-sufficient. The hard-working Azerbaijanis support
themselves through farming and dominate Georgia's agricultural markets.

On the political front, they are less fortunate and unwitting pawns in
cross-Caucasian politics. Earlier this summer, the villagers were
angered when opposition leader and former justice minister Mikhail
Saakishvili, who is widely regarded as sympathetic to Armenia, called
the Azerbaijanis of Georgia "a pitiful nation".

In response, Alibala Askerov, the head of the Society of Azerbaijanis in
Georgia, Heirat, appealed to politicians in Baku to speak up in support
for their co-nationals across the border.

The Georgian Azerbaijanis are easily manipulated at election time, said
David Chaduneli, who works for the NGO International Society for Fair
Elections and Democracy.

On June 2, local-election day, Chaduneli said officials in the village
of Kalinino in the Gardabani region brazenly accompanied voters right
into voting booths, explaining that they needed help with filling out
their ballots. Not surprisingly, Georgia's Azerbaijani-populated regions
have a record of delivering exactly the election result that the ruling
party and local leadership wants.

Despite their proximity to the Georgian capital, lack of basic language
skills has placed the Azerbaijanis in a complete information vacuum.

Ramin Bairamov, chairman of the society Inter-cultural friendship in the
Kvemo Kartli region, recounted episodes, which it would be hard to make
up: how for example local Azerbaijanis looked for the name of Heidar
Aliev - president of Azerbaijan - on voting ballots, because they did
not realise that Georgia was another state.

"Why should we expect anything else?" Bairamov said. "The thing is most
local people watch Azerbaijani television channels, read Azerbaijani
newspapers and take no part in the socio-political life of Georgia."

"Although office work is done in Georgian in the whole country,
concessions are made for leaders in this region who don't speak the
language well enough," Karakhan Khiyalov, deputy head of Gardaban
region, told IWPR. Khiyalov said that the local authorities, schools,
clinics and other state offices write all their documents in Russian, as
they used to in Soviet times.

Efforts to encourage people in the region to speak Georgian have been
ineffectual. The State Language Chamber, a government body that's been
charged with the task, organised free language courses for state
employees in the region. But in two years just 120 people attended the
classes.

A separate presidential programme for extra financing of Georgian
language teaching in non-Georgian schools offered teachers bonuses of 50
lari (almost 22 US dollars) a month, a sum almost equivalent to their
average salary, but even this did not attract the required number of
teachers to the region.

A few years ago one of the Azerbaijani schools in the village of Nazarlo
opened a Georgian department, recalls Mamed Mamedov, a local
parliamentary deputy and the overwhelming majority of parents sent their
first-grade children there. But four years later, when the children had
finished primary education, they found that there was no one who could
teach them history, biology or mathematics in Georgian.

"It's a big problem," said Kazanfar Gulamov, the headmaster of a school
in the village of Kesalo. "To work successfully a teacher should speak
Azeri as well, and in reality many of the Georgian language teachers
don't have any special education."

After several years teaching Georgian in a village school, Tsiala
Luarsabashvili decided to learn Azeri. "After that a lot changed, both
with the pupils themselves and the progress they made," she said. "When
the children realised that I know and understand their language they got
closer to me."

This fragile situation could be further undermined this autumn if, as
anticipated, the Georgian parliament passes a new language law. If a
current draft under discussion is passed, knowledge of Georgian will be
compulsory for anyone working in a state institution.

To some Azerbaijanis this is part of a campaign of veiled discrimination
against their community, and analysts have warned the authorities that
they should take care not to alienate them.

"In a situation, when ethnic Azerbaijanis, are inclined to regard
Azerbaijan as the guarantor of their security and the regime in Baku
often sees its compatriots in Georgia as the guarantor of stability in
the relations between the two states, the Georgian leadership should use
all its professional skills in the way it conducts its inter-ethnic
policies in Kvemo Kartli," commented Emil Adelkhanov of the Caucasian
Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development in Tbilisi.

Zaza Baazov is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi.

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