The Head of Tskhinval city Administration Gerasim Khugaev had a meeting with media representatives. The meeting's discussion mainly focused on the opposition rally planned for 21 March. As Khugaev underlined, the Republic of South Ossetia is a free and democratic state guaranteeing freedom of assemblies, street rallies and demonstrations. In order to organize such an event, a citizen or a group of citizens should address the administration of the place , where the event is going to happen.
Gerasim Khugaev continued with explaining that the city administration of Tskhinval received a notification from Tskhinval resident Grigory Dzassokhov about a rally planned for 21 March at the bus station square. The announced topic of the rally was "rehabilitation of destroyed housing and observance of constitutional rights of the RSO citizens". "This notification was considered in accordance with the legislation currently in force, namely the Provisions "On assemblies, rallies, street marches and demonstrations", enacted upon the Decree of the Supreme Council Presidium of the RSO on 2 March 1996. Having considered that the addressed notification did not comply with these Provisions and therefore, we had to refuse issuing a permission for this rally".
For example, the notification did not mention the full names of the organizers, their signatures, home and work addresses, as it is stipulated in the Provisions. The Tskhinval city administration cannot provide permission for this kind of events if the organizer is not known, since the participants' responsibility for public order vests in the organizers. "We have no guarantees that during this rally there are no violations of public order", said Khugaev. The head of city administration underlined that "the refusal to hold this rally was not aimed at preventing somebody from expressing a viewpoint different from the one of the authorities. He reminded that recently, a citizen of South Ossetia Timur Tskhovrebov was allowed to conduct similar action, which was held 5 March at the bus station square without any obstacles."
"The difference of the action held on 5 March and the one planned for 21 March is in the fact that the organizers of the 5 March rally submitted their documents in full accordance with requirements of the current legislation", said Khugaev. Nonetheless, based on the necessity to facilitate the development of various forms of opinion expression by citizens, regardless the fact that the notification did comply with the requirements of the Provisions, the City Administration suggested to the unknown organizers holding the event in the hall of the Administration building. This fully corresponds to the Article 1 of the Provisions. Speaking about the advantages of this decision, Gerasim Khugaev responded that the hall may accommodate 300 or more persons, and not only claimants but also officials who the claims refer to, and the media could be invited. This kind of gathering might be more effective, than a rally at the square, if there is a real will to bring positive change.
