12 June 2007, 19:06
A bill on how to return Meskhetians is ready in Georgia
The Parliament and the Ministry on Refugees' Matters of Georgia have jointly developed a bill aimed to bring the Muslim Meskhetians who were evicted in the 1940s to various Asian countries back home.
According to the information of the Ministry, the bill assumes to return home the descendants of these families, the "Gazeta.ru" informs.
The total number of Meskhetians who were moved out of Georgia reached 100,000 persons, 40 percent of them still live in the territory of Azerbaijan.
The "Caucasian Knot" has already informed that Tbilisi has failed until now to fulfil its obligation before the Council of Europe, taken in 1999, to repatriate Turks-Meskhetians.
The resettlement of deported Turks to Azerbaijan began in 1958-1960s. A total of eighteen thousand of them were evicted to Azerbaijan during that period. They were deployed in the Saatlinskiy and Sabirabadskiy Districts, where they got engaged in farming.
In 1989-1990s, about forty thousand Turks arrived to Azerbaijan from Uzbekistan. In Azerbaijan, some of them became refugees again, this time as a result of the Karabakh conflict.
The Turks-Meskhetians who are living in Azerbaijan are united in the "Veten" (Homeland) Society. Its chairman Ibragim Burkhanov has noted in his interview that out of all the member-countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, who gave them shelter, Azerbaijan is the most favourable and friendly. According to his story, the reason is in cultural and ethnic affinity of both nations.
