Georgian Patriots Camp Sparks Controversy

At six in the morning, a bus is already speeding north along the dusty road from the southern Georgian town of Akhaltsikhe. Its oldest passenger is 22 years old. Young people from the town are travelling to the “patriotic and sports camp” in the western Georgian village of Ganmukhuri.



The only thing they know about this village is that it is situated a kilometre from the breakaway territory of Abkhazia, which is outside the jurisdiction of Georgia.



Along the way, other buses full of young people are heading in the direction of Ganmukhuri from almost all parts of Georgia.



The Ganmukhuri camp was opened this year by Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili as an attractive new project for Georgian youth, following a number of others that were launched in 2005. Georgian parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze and the president's wife Sandra Roelofs visited it recently.



But Ganmukhuri is now at the centre of an international controversy after UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon called on July 23 for it to be moved away from the border with Abkhazia on the grounds that it was provocative to keep it so near the conflict zone. (See previous article).



Sulhan Sibashvili, head of the camp, told IWPR that Ban’s report had come as a “surprise” to them and that they had received no such warnings during visits from UN monitors to the camp.



“We are not provocateurs, we are patriots and we only want peace,” he said. “Our camp has a special function, we are one kilometre from Abkhazia and this is the best place for arousing and developing feelings of patriotism in young people.”



The young people in the camp are specifically told not to approach the border with Abkhazia where CIS peacekeeping forces stand guard.



"On the very first day, we were told that we are now 1.5 km from the administrative border of Abkhazia and, therefore, we have a particular mission," said Nino from Tbilisi, 19. "The leadership of the camp says that we are to show the Abkhaz that we are not enemies, that we want peace, and that we have come here - so close to them - not with weapons, but with songs and dancing.”



About 600 young people, aged between 15 and 22, have made ten-day visits to the camp this year.



It covers a large area on the Black Sea coast. There are 56 wooden cottages built in a circle looking out onto the sea.



Orange caps, T-shirts, and vests are distributed to participants, in order to make it easier to distinguish them from local youths who enter the area secretly to amuse themselves at discos.



There is a tight schedule. A bell wakes the young people at eight in the morning, then follows half an hour of morning exercise.



They have meals three times a day. The food is not very popular as the soup and pilaff are not as tasty as what they get at home.



After spending two hours swimming in the sea, everyone gets down to work. Some attend a seminar on AIDS, drug addiction or other such subjects; while others prepare concerts and plays to entertain audiences in the evening.



The young people say that they most enjoy evenings by the campfire, when they sit on the seashore, discuss various topics, play the guitar, and sing songs.



Here, on the border with Abkhazia, one topic eclipses all the others.



"Of course, we mostly discuss young people’s issues, but every such evening without fail ends with a discussion about Abkhazia. It is so close here, and this has its impact too. Our generation knows nothing about Abkhazia," said Ani, 19, who is an international relations student.



"I look at the sea in the direction of Sukhumi and feel an immense desire to be there,” she said. “I have the feeling that a different world starts a kilometre from here and I have to deserve to get there."



Ani believes that the camp that is so close to the Abkhaz border may anger the Abkhaz authorities.



"There is too much noise here,” she said. “There are discos in the evening, music plays and you can here slogans like 'Long live united Georgia!', 'Long live Abkhazia!', 'We will return!', and so forth. All this can give rise to anger on the other side.”



The UN report has made many participants in the camp and their parents nervous, while others have shrugged it off.



Nineteen-year-old Gogi Tsabadze's family was against his going to the camp. "My parents believed that Ganmukhuri was not the safest place to come and rest, but I insisted,” he said. “I wanted to come here. I feel quite safe here and I think that the authorities would not have risked the lives of 600 young people who are at this camp.”



Natia Shukakidze, 15, was going to come to the camp with a group of six friends. However, only two of them turned up.



"My friends and I wrote a project entitled 'Our century without AIDS',” she said. “We won and received vouchers for the patriotic camp as a prize. There was no choice, as the vouchers already said that we were to go to Ganmukhuri. My family did not resist, but my friends' parents refused to let their children go. They had heard that the United Nations regards this place as unsafe.”



The Georgian authorities have signalled that they have no intention of moving the camp and camp head Sulhan Sibashvili told IWPR that it will remain open until October 10.



Nino Narimanishvili is a correspondent with the Southern Gates newspaper in Samtskhe-Javakheti, Georgia.