South Ossetia to adopt “Sanakoyev list” in response to Tbilisi’s “Otkhozoria-Tatunashvili list”

South Ossetia plans to adopt the so-called “Sanakoyev list” before the end of the year.

This list will include “citizens of Georgia, the United States, Ukraine and other countries that are involved in the Ossetian genocide in South Ossetia,” South Ossetian Parliament Speaker Petr Gassiev told journalists.

If necessary, the list will be expanded and supplemented, said Gassiev.

The decision was made in South Ossetia immediately after the Georgian government published a sanctions list on 26 June. The list includes people who, according to the Georgian authorities, have committed crimes against Georgians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia since 1991.

The list was named after Gigi Otkhozoria and Archil Tatunashvili: the latter was brutally killed by security forces in South Ossetia in February, while the former was shot by an Abkhaz border guard in 2016.

• What is the Otkhozoriya-Tatunashvili list and how it will work – a JAMnews analysis

Petr Gassiev, however, stressed that the adoption of the Sanakoyev list is not a response to Tbilisi’s decision.

“Gregory Sanakoyev was brutally murdered by Georgians in June 1992, and the list bearing his name was launched by parliament two years ago,” the speaker said.

Gassiev explained that the list provides for all possible sanctions that can be applied to people who fall onto it, including an “attempt to act through the channels of Interpol.”

Amiran Dyakonov, a South Ossetian member of parliament, told South Ossetian RES news agency that the Georgian government’s adoption of the Otkhozoria-Tatunashvili sanctions list is
“a continuation of the policy of state terror by Georgia.”

“The Otkhozoria-Tatunashvili list gives the impression of tracing paper copy of the Magnitsky list [a list of persons who cannot enter the US and the EU countries – JAMnews]. This is an extremely unsuccessful project of “friends of Georgia”, among those that were developed in order to keep up anti-Ossetian and anti-Abkhazian sentiments among a certain part of Georgian society,” said Foreign Minister Dmitry Medoyev to the online portal “Echo of the Caucasus”.

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