Collapse of Armenian church in Tbilisi causes row in Georgia

10/12/ 2009

The collapse of an Armenian church in Tbilisi has angered Georgia’s ethnic Armenian population and provoked accusations that the government is not protecting the rights of ethnic minorities.

The St. Gevorg of Mughni Church dated from the 13th century and stood in the Georgian capital’s historic center until it fell down Nov. 19. No one was hurt in the incident.

Locals blamed the government, saying it had failed to protect a religious monument, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, or IWPR, reported on its Web site.

“They spent money on all these secondary things. Now, for New Year’s, they have hung lights above all the roads. Meanwhile, churches and many houses have still not been repaired,” Gayane Khachturova, a resident of Tbilisi’s old town, told the IWPR. “The government needs to spend its money correctly.”

Authorities promised to restore the church immediately, but did not manage to head off outrage in Armenia, where people feel the Georgian government discriminates against the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Students, politicians, religious figures and youth groups protested outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan on Nov. 24, demanding the registration of their church by Tbilisi and the return of buildings confiscated in the Soviet era.

“Georgia’s conduct over the issue is impermissible and unacceptable for a civilized and Christian country,” said Vahan Hovhannisian, a deputy with the far-right Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or Dashnaktsutyun, party in the Armenian parliament. “Only international pressure on Georgia can work here and this is what we intend to do.”

‘Calls Ignored’

According to the Dashnaktsutyun and other Armenian groups, the Georgian government had ignored calls for the church to be restored and persistently refused to satisfy the demands of the Armenian minority, which makes up about 5 percent of the Georgian population.

Ethnic Georgians, who constitute around 80 percent of the population, are overwhelmingly Orthodox, yet their church has different beliefs from the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Orthodox Church has a strong influence in the country, and Armenians say their own faith is discriminated against as a result.

“Of course, the Georgian Orthodox Church is to blame here, since it is very aggressive against national and religious minorities,” said Shirak Torosian, a Republican Party deputy in the Armenian parliament and chairman of the Javakhk union, which campaigns for Georgia’s Armenian minority. “Today, as a result of this aggression, no religious movement in Georgia apart from the Orthodox Church has legal registration.”

Torosian’s words found support in Georgia, where activists accused the Georgian government of not taking enough care of ethnic minorities.

Armenian and Georgian believers have regularly clashed over the ownership of churches, with Armenians accusing their rivals of effectively stealing buildings that belonged to them before the Soviet revolution.

“The Georgian authorities explain the delay in repairing the church of St. Gevorg by referring to its disputed ownership, but this is not a genuine reason,” Arnold Stepanyan, chairman of the pressure group Multinational Georgia, told the IWPR.

“Other churches are in the same condition, and those are ones that the Armenian church has no claim to,” he said. “The situation must be resolved.”

According to Stepanyan, the Armenian Apostolic Church is requesting the return of five churches in Georgia, four in Tbilisi and one in Akhaltsikhe. “It is hard to estimate the number of Armenian churches on Georgian territory, since different researchers and organizations give different figures,” he said, adding that the figure generally given is 150.

Nikoloz Vacheishvili, head of the National Agency for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, said the church, which is owned by the state and has not operated since Soviet times, would be restored at once.

“Work on the restoration of the church has already started. Now, the parts needing urgent repair are being strengthened by Tbilisi city hall,” he said. “This works will be finished by April or May 2010. After that, a budget will be prepared and sources of financing will be identified for the restoration work.”

Vacheishvili said a commission could also be set up, including officials and religious leaders from Armenia and Georgia, to decide to whom the church really belongs. He said a group of officials from Armenia had come for talks already.

“We invited them to take part in the drafting and restoration work. I think our Armenian colleagues were satisfied,” he was quoted as saying by IWPR.

Stepanyan, however, said the main problem was that the Armenian Apostolic Church did not enjoy the same advantages in Georgia as the Georgian Orthodox Church.

He said the lack of registration makes it difficult for Armenian religious communities to pay taxes, register property and reach believers in prison – since that requires permission from the Georgian Orthodox Church.

The Georgian Patriarchate, however, said the lack of registration was not its doing, and urged the government to afford the Armenians legal status.

“This is a question for the state, and not for the Orthodox Church,” said Zugdidi Metropolitan Gerasime, head of the patriarchate’s department for external affairs. “I think that some kind of status must be awarded to them.

“Of course, this must not be same as that of the Orthodox Church with its special role in the history of the country, but there must be a particular legal status,” he added. “As far as I know, this question is now under discussion.”

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