Posted on 04/08/2004 11:23:11 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The Association of Human Rights Defense in Georgia has demanded local law enforcement structures arrest the former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, if he comes to Georgia, RIA Novosti reported Thursday.
Gorbachev allegedly planned to visit Georgia on Friday, April 9, 15 years after violent clashes in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. The association’s leader Giorgy Kervalishvili was quoted by the agency as saying that the former Soviet president is directly responsible for that tragedy. He also demanded the arrest of former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze who at that time was Soviet foreign minister. Sehvardnadze “is also involved in the tragedy of April 9,” he said.
Kervalishvili declared that the association members would go on hunger-strike if Gorbachev visits their country.
However, Gorbachev’s press secretary Vladimir Polyakov, quoted by the agency, said that he had no information on such a visit. “Maybe there were some talks about the trip but no concrete plans,” he said.
On April 9, 1989, Soviet troops used force to break up a national liberation rally in Tbilisi led by the late Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who was then the leader of a nationalist movement. When the rally members refused to leave the central Rustaveli Avenue 20 people were killed, many of them intoxicated by gas used by the troops.
After the overthrow of Shevardnadze in Georgia, in November 2003, the new president, Mikhail Saakashvili, decided to immortalize the name of Gamsakhurdia, in particular to erect his monument. The last armed followers of the late president laid down their arms. Gamsakhurdia became Georgian president in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but was overthrown in 1992.
Meanwhile, on Friday, a monument to a Russian politician, former mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, will be erected in Tbilisi. He led a commission of the Soviet Supreme Council that investigated the tragedy of 1989.
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