The efforts on releasing the Ossetian hostages, abducted or illegally detained by Georgian law enforcement bodies and currently kept on the territory of Georgia, continue since 2008, told the Deputy Special Representative for Post-Conflict Settlement Merab Chigoev at the Parliament session. According to him, the work is extremely difficult.
"The Georgian side screams about the detention of Georgian citizens while there is an interest among international media to cover this issue.
Then, the Georgian side easily forgets about its citizens. As of now, there are 16 persons detained for illegal border crossing, illicit possession of arms and other crimes. Only the last two detainees – Levan Khmiadashvili and Viktor Buchukuri are spoken about. The Georgian side is silent about the rest. And when we raise the issue about the fact that there are persons detained before August 2008, everyone is trying to escape the discussion", said Chigoev, - The Georgian authorities are not interested in the fate of their citizens."
"At these meetings, our top priority is to release all our citizens. Our principle is to exchange all for all, to start with tabula rasa. But the Georgian side does not agree with this. They agree on exchanging only those detained after the 2008 hostilities", informed Chigoev. The official gave a detailed overview on the visit of the Council of Europe (CoE) Human Rights Commissioner Tomas Hammarberg to South Ossetia. He noted that all these issues were presented to the European Union as well, but so far, there was no response to these requests. He assured that South Ossetia would continue raising the issue of release of South Ossetian citizens at all meetings and at all levels.
