church leader and seven alleged associates who has been accused of a four year-long rain of terror against the country’s religious minorities.
If convicted, the violent Old Calendarist priest Fr Basil Mkalavishvilli and his aids, who were arrested March 12, could receive at least seven or eight years in prison, Baptist Alexei Ordjonikidze told the Foreum 18 News Service (F18News) of the human rights watchdog Forum 18.
Ordjonikidze watched in horror in March 2002 as Mkalavishvilli and his associates "stopped their lorry, beat his colleagues, then burnt the Bible Society literature the lorry contained," F18 News said.
"Mkalavishvilli didn’t conduct the beatings himself, but he organized the group and issued instructions as to who they should beat. Ivanidze was particularly bad," Ordjonikidze told F18News from the capital Tbilisi. They didn’t beat me because of my age."
"The Baptist Church of Georgia shares the satisfaction of the rest of the progressive-minded population who were delighted to hear of Mkalavishvilli’s arrest," Baptist leader Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili was quoted as saying. He said "this was not out of feelings of revenge", but out of the "enormous need" for the country to see that justice is being restored.
He reported that television stations have been replaying the video of Mkalavishvilli’s attack on a Baptist warehouse in 2002, during which Bible Society books – including Bibles – were burnt. "The film shows Mkalavishvilli directing the mob to burn the books and issuing
instructions."
OTHER GROUPS
Other religious groups, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, have also welcomed the move as they organization was reportedly targeted in dozens of raids led by the violent priest. Levan Ramishvili, the head of the Liberty Institute, also recalled how his human rights group in Tbilisi was attacked in July 2002 by other self-appointed vigilantes in retaliation for its work for religious freedom and human rights.
He said Mkalavishvilli’s detention brings the end of the era of religious violence in Georgia one step closer. "When he and his colleagues are convicted by a court, a line will be drawn and a page of history will be closed," he reportedly said.
Ramishvili added that his eventual conviction would serve to punish Mkalavishvilli and to be an important symbol to restrain others from committing similar religiously-motivated violence.
He stressed that Mkalavishvilli was not the prime organizer of the religious violence, but "a puppet." The recently elected Georgian President Saakashvili denied that the new authorities are undermining Orthodoxy and justified Mkalavishvilli’s arrest as a move to "defend" the Georgian Orthodox Church. "Extremist religious groups threaten the Orthodox Church," F18News quoted him as saying.
DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM
Saakashvili had promised to improve democracy and freedom in the country as well as fighting corruption, following the December Revolution of Roses which ousted former President Eduard Shevardnadze.
In a reaction the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate said that although it had defrocked Mkalavishvilli as priest, it condemned the "arrest with the use of force" as "unacceptable"."Georgian law enforcers could have arrested Mkalavishvilli without clashes."
Police had reportedly stormed Mkalavishvilli’s church of the Iveria Icon in the Gldani district of Tbilisi where he and his supporters had barricaded themselves in.
More than a hundred riot police destroyed its door with lorries, before deploying tier gas and batons in a clash with Mkalavishvilli’s supporters, leaving dozens injured, F18News said. Mkalavishvilli and his associates have been taken into three-month pre-trial detention, F18 News reported.
