Locals Demand Cancellation of Decision to Transfer Racha Forests to Khidasheli

‘’The populations of 4 villages have gathered.

We are starting a protest and we are giving a one-week deadline to the local and central authorities to fulfill our demands.

In case of non-compliance, more people will join us and we will move to Oni municipality's mayor's office,’’ declared Varlam Goletiani, the head of the movement ‘’save Rioni Valley,’’ who collected more than 1000 signatures over Racha's villages for the purpose.

‘’Racha does not need a master like this man, and in any case, this license should be revoked (Khidasheli was given 104,712 hectares of forest under the pretext of setting up a hunting farm).

The second demand concerns the Racha National Park, which has virtually no qualities of a nature reserve or a national park.

The outline of the reserve does not cover any rivers on which a dam could potentially be built. All the areas where minerals were mined during the Soviet times have been cut off. The national park does not include the area marked for manganese mining in Shkmeri. They included Glaciers and the Caucasus range in the protected area of the national park. A person cannot walk there, a road cannot be built, trees don’t grow, and you cannot dig for minerals – it is already protected.

In fact, what really needs protection and nurturing, they gave to David Khidasheli, a businessman who made his fortune in Russia. No one will be able to enter that territory and it will fall beyond control. We are loosing the entire Racha, and they are trying to cover up and repackage this as if they created a nature reserve. 

Locals have already faced problems with access to the forest. No one is against a national park and we understand its essence full well, but it should not cross into the fields of the population and should not include the living environment by which people exist in this village.

All these villages are borderline, with a hostile state at a stone's throw, so who should we hope to protect this land if not the local people. If things turn sour, the people living here will become the first line of defense. We should all take care of these people, and they should have all the necessary conditions to stay here,’’ said Varlam Goletiani.

He also touched on the violations of the law committed in order to transfer the forests to Khidasheli’s company: ‘’The local authorities falsified records, as if they surveyed the population and the people agreed to transfer the forests. In fact, they didn't ask anyone anything.’’

The forests of Racha were transferred to Putin's sanctioned next-door oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov's partner, Davit Khidasheli, with many violations of the law - secretly from the locals who use these forests, secretly from environmentalists, community organizations, and the media. The transfer of tens of thousands of hectares threatens the private property and livelihood of the people of Racha. This decision violates both national laws and European conventions and creates ecological and historical absurdities - to formalize the control of the occupier in the country by our own will, with our own hands, by our own decision.

The decision signed by Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia and the order of the head of the National Environmental Agency on the transfer of forests to Khidasheli have been appealed to the court by the environmental organization Green Alternative and the community organization of Racha, who are demanding its cancellation.