It has been a month since the Georgian-Ossetian forum lately arranged in Holland and its result, namely, adopted appeal to participate in Geneva discussions – has been dominating themes in South Ossetia. After the August 2008 war, the Geneva discussions represent the only format of negotiations where representatives of Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and international organizations meet.
The appeal states that humanitarian problems of residents of South Ossetia and Georgia should not be the subject of political speculations and should be solved with priority sequence: first of all – insurance of free movement in the region.
Neither the civil forum nor the issues discussed represent news. The Georgian-Ossetian civil forum emerged in 2007 and Geneva-intended recommendations are widely talked about by negotiation participants: it is discussed by both Georgian and Osseitian politicians – openly or in lobbies, international and non-governmental organizations, journalists. The news actually seems to be the fact that such recommendations were first heard from civil society activists.
During 20-year-long conflict people got used to living in conditions of besieged fortress: weighing each word and each step – enemy can use any weakness.
And it caused a storm. On the initiative of Boris Chochiev, South Ossetian President Representative in the field of post-conflict regulation, local politicians and activists have begun exposure of those “treacherous statements” and expressed their indignation concerning the fact of meeting with Georgians. Its culmination became the beating Timur Tskhovrebov, one of the forum members, local civil activist, journalist, and opposition politician, by parliament members on July 24.
The mounted scandal revealed the negative attitude of both the Government and the population towards public debate of Georgian-Ossetian relations, as well as radical feelings of civil society activists – of those who should be more or less tolerantly disposed.
During 20-year-long conflict, people got used to leaving in conditions of besieged fortress: weighing each word and each step – enemy can use any weakness. But now, after the 2008 war, local residents agree that by deployment of Russian military forces in the region they feel safer; though the government still continues to exploit the “enemy icon”. It obviously shows that South Ossetia is not yet ready to start peaceful way of living. The burning government reaction on the forum statement points at its weakness. The “enemy icon” is a useful method to govern society, and Kokoity does not want to lose the leverage. Any different opinion is perceived as treacherous.
In a small republic with undeveloped infrastructure almost all problems are connected with conflict, therefore civil activists are occupied with self-censorship: they are ready to limit their words and actions. Now some activists say that they agree with the contents of the Georgian-Ossetian forum statement, though they underline that “the time for its admittance has not come yet”; and all non-governmental organizations are ready to agree each foreign contract, project and travel tour with the government.
In quite a little traditional society where almost everyone knows each other, to solve the problems statesmen turn to their private relations and not to legal mechanisms. Nonexistence of independent information sources does not give means of protecting human rights in civil space as well.
In South Ossetia there are about 100 officially registered public organizations though only ten of them work effectively. Partially it represents the general tendency observed in post-soviet space: plenty of non-governmental organizations were created in 1990s by support of grants of the West; and in the conditions of unemployment it created the form of employment for many people. Mainly they were “wide profile” public organizations that were working in the peace field.
Now it is almost impossible to strictly define working field of many non-governmental organizations – they are working on completely different problems; as well as one person can simultaneously be a civil activist, a journalist, a politician or a statesman. It is natural that such crossing often leads to conflict of interests, its example being Timur Tskhovrebov’s situation – he, as a politician, has become dependable on his political activity. Such situation is very common for small societies and it has its own explanation for a 30-thousand-population republic – active men are scarce and they simultaneously occupy several niches.
The acute issue is financial support of non-governmental organizations – formerly, majority of grants were coming via Georgia. Now the financing from western organizations are treated with too much precaution: the West is our enemy. Risky organizations encounter many problems: not only political – only small part of donors is ready to allocate support without the condition of accepting South Ossetia as a part of Georgia. Local non-governmental organizations are too weak to submit quality applications to big international organizations independently. In addition to it, they mainly support projects related to conflict. Raising funds for projects directed at solving internal problems is very difficult.
Only non-governmental organizations close to local government can receive financial support of the government. As a rule, such organizations represent South Ossetia at many international meetings, and they express position favorable for the government; their members often belong to statesmen or staff of special services. Financing civil sector from Russians is either non-existent or again only non-governmental organizations close to local government can hope for it.
The civil society of South Ossetia is very weakly connected to the third sector of Russia: there are only few Russian non-governmental organizations working in the region. For the majority of Russian civil society the august war of 2008 was a complete surprise. The civil society of South Ossetia is said to be on an early stage of formation. What will be the behavior of civil organizations towards conflict related to Timur Tskhovrebov – is an issue of principal. And even if it is true that for many the committed violence in unacceptable, the majority still doubts whether they are ready to publicly denounce the fact of Timur’s beating.
The terminology used in the article belongs to the author and not “Liberal”.
The article is prepared with support of Heinrich Boell Foundation. The publication statements and ideas do not necessarily express the Heinrich Boell Foundation opinion.