Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Accusations fly over Georgia conflict

It looks like Georgia is filing a complaint against Russia before the International Court of Justice:
Georgia has filed a law suit against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for ethnic cleansing, the secretary of Georgia's Security Council, Kakha Lomaia, said on Tuesday.

Separately, International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he had been contacted about the conflict in Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia and may launch a preliminary investigation.

The ICJ rules on nation versus nation disputes while the ICC was set up to try individuals for serious crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Both courts are based in The Hague in the Netherlands.

"Today, the Georgian ambassador to the Netherlands filed a law suit to the International Court of Justice called 'The state of Georgia against the state of Russia' because of ethnic cleansing conducted in Georgia by Russia in 1993 to 2008," Lomaia told Reuters.
The article does not go into detail about these allegations; it's all rather vague. It's also rather odd, given the timescale of these alleged atrocities, that they didn't file suit before -- if the Russians were indeed conducting some sort of atrocities by proxy in South Ossetia, you'd think they could have filed suit before. Also interesting are the death tolls reported in the same article:
Russia says 1,600 South Ossetian civilians have been killed, while Georgia has reported close to 200 killed and hundreds of wounded. Neither set of figures has been independently verified.
So even Georgia is only claiming 200 deaths in the conflict. Whether the South Ossetian death toll is as high as Russia is claiming, only time will tell.

Equally interesting is this video. An American citizen, who lives in the conflict zone with his wife and daughter, has some pretty damning things to say about Georgia's conduct -- and America's support of Georgia. Thanks to N. Beltov in this babble thread for that second link.

No comments: