August 30 is the International Day of Missing Persons
More than 130 citizens of South Ossetia have been missing since the 1990s, and 7 people have been missing since 2008, the youngest of them, Alan Khugaev, was 16, the Chairman of the Republican non-governmental organization “Memory and Hope” Lydia Kudzieva. said at a press conference in the State Committee for Information and Press
She told in detail about the work of the organization since its inception, spoke about the plight of the families of the missing.
“We have been working for 28 years to find out the fate of the missing citizens of South Ossetia, but so far there are no any results. Both the country's leadership and the International Committee of the Red Cross help us a lot. Many of the missing had no more relatives, and some were tired of hopelessness and no longer came in contact with us,” said the head of the organization “Memory and Hope”.
Lidia Kudzieva lost her husband Pavel Kabulov on March 18, 1991, and since then she has been dealing with the search and clarification of the fate of the missing residents of our Republic. Since 2009, the organization has been collaborating with the General Lebed Peacekeeping Mission. Thanks to it, they conducted 82 DNA analyzes, the results of which are stored in a laboratory in Moscow.
“Thanks to DNA analysis, we were able to find one missing person in 2008, Mair Tedeev, and buried him with honors in his homeland, in the village of Malda. In recent years, we have been actively working with the ICRC; the staff of this organization also helps us to conduct DNA tests. And thanks to the Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy for post-conflict settlement, Murat Dzhioev and the Human Rights Ombudsman Inal Tasoev, we meet with representatives of international organizations, in particular, with the co-chairs of the Geneva discussions,” said Kudzieva.
Pivotal issue
Murat Dzhioev, Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy for post-conflict settlement, has noted that the hope will live until we find out the fate of each missing person.
“The work in this direction is ongoing and will continue. The organization "Memory and Hope" is doing a lot of work to collect intravital data and DNA of relatives. And this is very important, although we do not have tangible results. DNA analysis conducted with the assistance of the ICRC allows us to determine whether our citizens are among the exhumed or not. Unfortunately, the research results do not always suit us, but a negative result is also a result,” Dzhioev said.
He also told about the work in the framework of the Geneva discussions. According to him, the issue of ascertaining the fate of missing citizens is always one of the pivotal points at the Geneva discussions. “Moreover, our delegation has a clear instruction from the head of state Anatoly Bibilov at every meeting to raise this issue at all levels. We do not give the opportunity to both our counterparts and representatives of international organizations to forget about this issue,” the Envoy said.
He has added that it is necessary to use all available opportunities to find out the fate of these people. In particular, for those persons who have been listed missing since 2008, the South Ossetian side has accurate information that five of the seven were clearly in the hands of the Georgian security forces.
“This is confirmed by the reports of Thomas Hammarberg in 2010 and the independent expert invited by the OSCE, and we insist that the Georgian party gives an answer where are our young guys,” said Dzhioev.
According to him, no matter how much time passes, the work will continue.
