Georgian Cartographers Accused of ‘Selling’ a Slice of the Homeland

UNM “deserves to be banned because of the treasonous surrender of Davit Gareja,” Defense Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, the political secretary of Georgian Dream, said a month before the election. The voters faced a simple choice “between treason and […] patriotism,” he said. Broadcasts of the government’s main mouthpiece, Imedi TV, were emblazoned with a message “Davit Gareja is Georgia.”

The charges appalled Georgia’s liberals and intellectuals, who have rallied in support of the cartographers, even holding demonstrations. Georgian Dream had “difficulty securing a third term and began a witch hunt,” said prominent sociologist Iago Kachkachishvili in a February 3 television interview. He said that an imaginary story of “treason” roused patriotic feelings and helped the party connect to nationalist voters.

Melashvili himself blames Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, who he says forced party officials, prosecutors, and courts to do his bidding. “I have every reason to believe this was an election trick by Ivanishvili,” Melashvili said.

Even two months after the election – which resulted in a decisive, if controversial, Georgian Dream victory – the government continues to press the case against the cartographers.

Georgian Dream officials have dropped hints that additional charges might be brought, and that they could be against high-ranking former officials. Broadcasts on the government’s top mouthpiece, Imedi TV, have been emblazoned with a message “Davit Gareja is Georgia” a slogan that also is being used as a hashtag in social media campaigns.

In fact, the Davit Gareja segment of the border doesn’t directly figure into the charges against the cartographers. Prosecutors instead hold the two responsible for decisions made regarding other sections of the border that were agreed between Azerbaijan and Georgia between 2004 and 2007. The Georgian government has said it will try to reverse these agreements.

But in the public discourse, distinctions between different segments and the actual charges are as blurry as the disputed border. The framing around the monasteries made it especially sensitive to the faithful, and at a time when tensions in the region were already high as a result of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. While the narrative is that cartographers “sold Georgia’s land,” the buyer is never explicitly named. By implication, though, it’s obviously Azerbaijan – a strategic partner of Georgia. In the hoopla, some Georgians adopted the hashtag #AzerbaijanisanOccupier, or called for boycotts against the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR.

To many Georgians, the case amounts to a political show trial. One commentator, Jaba Devdariani, called it “Georgia’s Dreyfus Affair.”

Melashvili, meanwhile, sees it as a struggle of emotion against expertise. Since the case began, a variety of nationalists, armchair cartographers, and priests have been holding forth about how they think the border should be drawn. “That all of Davit Gareja is Georgian is an emotional and cultural truth,” he said. “But the key is to make it a cartographic reality, accepted by international law.”