Why can’t a Georgian Azerbaijani get a national surname? |
in Georgia national and non-governmental organization “Salam platform” of religious minorities has been running the “Return my last name” campaign for three years now.
Radio Liberty’s Exo Kavkaza site writes that, despite the long period of time, the campaign is still from the Georgian authorities national could not get a response to the request for the nationalization of the surnames of the minority representatives.
First of all, it is about taking the Russian endings ov/ova in the surnames of Azerbaijanis.
Azerbaijani representative of the platform Sema Sadik (the name and surname are presented in Russian – ed.) He said in an interview with the Exo Kavkaza website that the surnames of ethnic minorities, including Azerbaijanis, ending in -ov/-ova Russia emerged as a result of the policies of the empire, and later of the Soviet Union:
“We started this campaign in 2019. But even before that, we Azerbaijanis had problems with Russian endings in our surnames. This issue has worried our ancestors and parents. But according to the laws of Georgia, we cannot change these endings in our surnames.”
Sema Sadık says that now the territory of Georgia 20 At that time, the surnames of Azerbaijanis were also subjected to occupation, just as the country was occupied.
Sadik said that the Ministry of Justice of Georgia did not allow to change the surnames of the members of the platform in Georgia they prepared a petition demanding the adoption of the relevant legislative act. 25 thousand people signed this petition:
“In 2016, my father and I went to the “House of Justice” in Tbilisi. There they told us that according to the law we cannot drop the ending in our surname. They told us that we should submit a document confirming that someone in our generation bears such a surname.”
Sema tried to explain that Russia empire, later in the early days of the Soviet Union, they (in fact, the entire population of the USSR – ed) did not have any documents at all, and he could not present such a document:
“They told me in the court that I should write an application to raise this issue. 300 lari (112 dollars) I have to pay. It was the first time I faced the law that required payment of 300 lari for the application. But they immediately added: “You will be rejected anyway.” Because we have one law there is no”. It turned out that they wanted 300 GEL from me for an application that would be rejected. After 2016, my family and I decided to use our last name as Sadık, spoken everywhere. That is, without “hunting”. But unfortunately, in all our documents, we remain as Sadikhovs.”
Sema says that they have appealed to several MPs regarding this issue. From the opposition “Girchi” party deputies Vakhtang Meghrelishvili, Zurab Caparidze and non-partisan Tariyel Nakaidze they supported him from the beginning to the end of this process.
He judge Chairman of the human rights committee from the Georgian Dream party To Mikhail Sarcveladze also applied.
The government deputy told him that judge party on this issue law working on the project. This meeting is 2020It happened in It seems that the word goes law The work on the project is not finished yet.
Exo Kavkaza writes that Sema and his platform have appealed to the court regarding the issue.
They are currently awaiting an appeal hearing on January 18.
Sema says that until now there are three issues court considered in the process:
“We were told that 3,400 of the signatures we collected are invalid.”
The reason for this was that mobile phone numbers were not written next to those signatures.
Sema said that he does not expect a positive result from the appeal court. He notes that they will not stop fighting and Europe They will appeal to the Human Rights Court.