Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC) addresse the religious conflict in the village Buknari and calls on the state to take effective steps to de-escalate the conflict and ensure the unwavering protection of human rights.

According to the media reports, as well as interviews with local community leaders, EMC studied the picture of religious confrontation in the village of Buknari (Chokhatauri Municipality). The Muslim community has been living for several decades in the village of Buknari, where they settled from the highland villages of Guria and Adjara in different periods (firstly 50-70 years ago). Currently, they represent half of the local community. The Muslim community has been demanding the construction of a mosque in the village since 2007, however, they encountered obstacles and the mosque space could not be organized. About 10 months ago, a local community bought a private house in the village from a Muslim neighbor who moved to Tsalka and they soon began practicing religion in this area. According to the Muslims, they are not going to build a minaret and have been trying their best not to "irritate" the neighboring Christians all this time. However, the organization of the prayer space was followed by the dissatisfaction of the local Christians. According to Muslims, some members of the local Christian community do not allow them to pray, claiming that Muslims are “inhabited" in the village and that they have no right to open a mosque on "Christian land." The conflict over this issue commenced about a month ago and it took the form of mainly verbal disputes and quarrels between neighboring communities. Unfortunately, on January 11-12, 2020, the conflict took the form of a physical confrontation. Yesterday, three Muslims, including Muslim children, were seriously injured in a clash between neighbors. The injured were taken to hospital with multiple injuries.

The local self-government authorities were informed about the conflict around the mosque, but it seems that they had not taken appropriate measures to resolve it. According to the Muslim community, the Chokhatauri municipality mayor called on the local communities to negotiate and recommended the transfer of a private house for the mosque to 3 Muslims and 3 Christians. Clearly, this condition was not acceptable to the Muslim community.

According to the official information of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, 1 person was arrested for the violence. A meeting of local community leaders with the governor is scheduled for 12:00 today to resolve the conflict.

As the above-presented factual circumstances demonstrate, two major legal issues emerge in the identified incidents. 1. Cases of violence against affected Muslims, which requires a timely and effective legal response; and 2. The creation of safe and peaceful conditions for the functioning of the prayer space, which requires the effective prevention of incidents of harassment and persecution of the Muslim community.

Arrangement of religious space in a private home, when it does not require any construction intervention, is not subject to legal regulation or permission (even the legislation on the construction/reconstruction of religious buildings provides for religiously neutral procedures and does not impose special restrictions and conditions on the construction of religious buildings). Accordingly, the statement made by a local self-government authority that prayers should take place in a religious building arranged and agreed in accordance with the law is not legally accurate and adequate.

It should be noted that in recent years a chain of religious conflicts against the Georgian Muslim community has been revealed and it has been observed in Nigvziani (2012), Tsintskaro (2013), Samtatskaro (2013), Chela (2013), Kobuleti (2014), Mokhe (2014) and Adigeni (2016). All of these conflicts had common social and cultural causes and contexts. The conflict took place in multi-religious and sometimes multi-ethnic communities inhabited by eco-migrant families, where local communities lacked a common memory and tradition of coexistence. At the same time, the conflicts mainly occurred in the context of government transition or elections and were related to the belief and feeling of new opportunities for local communities to enjoy the freedom of religion. In all cases, the rhetoric of the local Christian community was based on the ethnoreligious nationalism paradigm and relied on the Islamophobic/sometimes Turkophobic sentiments of the inadmissibility of Islamic practice on "Georgian soil." This rhetoric is even more severe for the Georgian Muslim community, which is ethnically Georgian, and that is why their Islamic self-identity becomes doubly unacceptable to the dominant ethnoreligious nationalism framework.

The analysis of these conflicts reveals that the state had not taken proper legal response in an of them, which encouraged and normalized impunity as a whole. Moreover, in some cases, the police themselves were directly involved in large-scale acts of violence against local Muslim communities. In the villages Chela and Mokhe, the Ministry of Interior Affairs organized a large-scale police operation, which resulted in the beating and arrest of dissatisfied Muslim peasants mobilized on the spot due to the illegal cutting of the minaret and the demolishing of the historic mosque. It should be noted that some of these conflicts are still unresolved and the Muslim community is unable to properly exercise its rights (including in Kobuleti, Mokhe, Samtatskaro). However, despite the experience of alienation and mistrust in conflict-affected communities so far, the state has not taken any special positive measures aimed at restoring trust, transforming the conflict, and creating a multicultural environment.

This chain of religious conflicts and the State's non-secular and unequal policies create an alienating and divisive political and social environment for non-dominant religious groups, hindering the building of an equal, democratic, and solidary society. At the same time, it creates a traumatic memory and experience in the Muslim community that reinforces social frustration and a sense of second-class citizenship.

Bearing in mind the abovementioned, EMC Calls on:

The Ministry of Interior Affairs

Take appropriate measures to prevent violent practices, de-escalate the conflict, and ensure a timely and effective investigation into the incident.

Take all relevant measures the create a safe and peaceful environment of worship for Muslims in the mosque area

Local self-government and authorities responsible for human rights in the Government Administration

Develop a strategy and action plan for conflict transformation in the local community that, on the one hand, unwaveringly upholds the freedom of religion of the Muslim community and responds to their needs for mosque space in the village, and on the other hand, will facilitate to restore trust between local communities, and their long-term coexistence in a peaceful, solidary and equal environment.

EMC expresses readiness to protect the legal interests of the victims and the local Muslim community and also to support the state in planning and implementing positive steps related to the conflict transformation.

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