21 Georgia citizens who were forcefully deported from Russia in 2006 have won their case against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights.
In the autumn of 2006, after four Russian officers had been arrested in Tbilisi and charged with espionage, Moscow retaliated by sanctioning an immediate deportation of thousands of Georgians.
On December 20, the ECHR ruled that Russia had violated four articles of the Human Rights Convention, citing cases of inhuman and degrading treatment, failure to provide adequate legal representation, and obstruction of freedom of movement. People were massively deported because of their ethnicity, the court stated.
A particular focus was put on the deportation of a pregnant woman and her four young children. She had been kept in extremely poor conditions for two weeks, not allowed to stay and prevented from leaving Russia. After she did finally make it to Georgia, she gave birth to a stillborn baby.
In another case, a Georgian man was found by the ECHR to have died because the Russian government had failed to provide him, an asthma sufferer, with proper conditions when deporting him.
The deportees’ rights were defended by Georgian organizations Young Lawyers’ Association and Article 42 of the Constitution.