On July 26, the Caucasus Journalists Network (www.caucasusjournalists.net), with the participation of journalists from Armenia and Azerbaijan, organized an interview with Beka Mindiashvili, head expert at the Center for Tolerance, a body adjunct to the office of the Ombudsman.

The center has been working since 2006, producing publications, conducting research, developing tasks, and organizing seminars, conferences and discussions, all of which deal with ethnic and religious issues.

According to Mindiashvili, there are around 80 organizations professionally involved in issues of ethnic minorities that also work with the Council for National Minority Issues. Mindiashvili said that this council had done some very important work, especially by publishing a task list which needed to be implemented in order to put into practice the framework convention for the protection of ethnic minorities in Georgia. The tasks are addressed to various state institutions. Mindiashvili considered this to be an exceptional case because representatives of ethnic minorities, for the first time in Georgia, have gone to the government and mass media presenting their solutions to the problems faced by their communities. Within the framework of this program, the council has organized around 60 meetings with state bodies and media representatives. The latter (including representatives of the Ministry of Education and the Parliament) have mostly agreed with and accepted the task list.

Mindiashvili noted that the center had recently monitored the media to study reports which feed the negative stereotypes associated with ethnic minorities. They were now working on a report by the Ombudsman on ethnic and religious minorities to the President. Such reports were also presented twice a year to the Parliament. Hetq asked what the main problems were faced by the Armenian and Azeri ethnic minorities in Georgia. Mindiashvili replied that they faced mainly language problems, i.e. little or no knowledge of Georgian, which hindered the careers of many in government jobs and was generally a serious barrier to their integration into Georgian society. According to Mindiashvili, ethnic Armenians and Azeris first face this language problem when they seek admission in the country's institutions of higher education. Despite all the efforts of the Georgian state bodies and especially the Ministry of Education, this issue is far from resolved. According to Mindiashvili, the main cause behind this lay in the past, when the main language of Georgia's ethnic minorities was Russian and Georgian was not given due attention. The minority groups could not be blamed for their insufficient knowledge of Georgian. This was first and foremost the government's problem, because it was their responsibility to create the necessary conditions for learning Georgian. At the same time, Mindiashvili considered it intolerable to force Georgian on anyone and said that learning the language had to be done voluntarily. As for the law regarding education, Mindiashvili said that it did not limit the medium of education in Georgian schools to the Georgian language alone.

Adalyat, a newspaper based in Azerbaijan, cited an announcement by their Education Minister Masir Mardanov, in which he said that Azerbaijan was not interested in the migration of ethnic Azeris from Georgia and would prefer that they continue living there. Mindiashvili considered such statements to be very positive, as was the Armenian president's appeal to Armenians in Georgia, asking them to keep living there, learn the language and hasten their integration into society.

The editor of the Azerbaijani site zmm.az quoted Vafa Guluzade, who had said that even if the ethnic Azeris of Georgia learn the language, they would never be able to work in state institutions. Mindiashvili disagreed with this viewpoint and noted that Azeris were represented in the Kvemo Kartli regional administration. But it was true that this issue existed at the central level and the main cause for it was a lack of knowledge of Georgian. The expert noted that the Zurab Zhvania School of Administration had been established two years ago in the city of Kutaisi. The main aim of its program is to prepare administrators from the representatives of ethnic minorities from those areas where the communities were gathered. They studied Georgian and administration there. According to Mindiashvili, all this showed the government's interest in training and involving representatives of ethnic minorities in state institutions.

Mindiashvili dismissed theories that Armenians would pose a danger once they learned Georgian and starting working in state bodies, where they could realize their separatist plans and create a situation in Georgia similar to the Karabakh conflict. This question had been posed by a representative of the Press Council of Azerbaijan. Mindiashvili said that any talk of serious separatist tendencies in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region were exaggerated. “There were no such problems even in the early 1990s, when Georgia was under Zviad Gamsakhurdia's nationalist rule,” he said.

Mindiashvili agreed completely with Armenian analyst Samvel Martirosyan's opinion that the Georgian press often featured articles with extreme anti-Armenian content. “The Georgian press fails to realize its role in promoting tolerance and political integration. As for the stimulus, it is often found to come from the Georgian ecclesiastical circles, who have a lot of influence on the public, including journalists,” said Mindiashvili. Such sentiment is also fed by opposition parties, who are trying to use this for their own political gains. Mindiashvili said that the Georgian press was full of stereotypes not only regarding Armenians, but also other ethnic minority groups. The Georgian Ombudsman has spoken against and condemned the Georgian media on more than one occasion and even refused to give an interview to a newspaper, which had earlier published an article with fascist sentiment. The expert also noted that the office of the Ombudsman was planning a large program aimed against xenophobic sentiment in the Georgian press.

Hetq asked how the implementation of that program was planned, to which Mindiashvili replied that the first step would be to create a working group which would identify offensive articles. It was then planned to meet with the authors of those articles and to organize discussions with them as well as other representatives of the press. Mindiashvili did not rule out the use of more forceful methods, including for example filing a complaint against those authors to the media council.

Defeating stereotypes is a long process and depends on changing the mindset of both the Georgian public as well as the ethnic groups concerned. This process can be facilitated by the propaganda of multiculturalism and raising the level of education and civic consciousness. A lot of work has to be done with the media, who have to play a positive role in this process.

Hetq also asked whether the presence of many ethnic groups was a problem for Georgia or an advantage. Mindiashvili replied, “Georgia's ethnic and religious pluralism – especially compared to the situation in neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan – is definitely an advantage for my country. This makes Georgia a more attractive country in the economic, political and cultural spheres, both on a regional as well as an international level. I hope that the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic groups and religions in Georgia will become a model for a peaceful and stable Caucasus in the future.”