operation in Lopota valley<\/a>. It started at night on August 28, and the Saakashvili government claimed it was done to free five young men who had been kidnapped in the Lapankuri forest two days earlier. The operation resulted in the death of two Interior Ministry employees, one military doctor, eleven members of an armed group, some of whom were Georgian citizens.<\/p>\nMuzayev held a press conference after he wasn\u2019t allowed to cross border the Georgian border on January 18. He says the harassment started last spring, when he was brought to some facility in Tbilisi, then three times at the Interior Ministry. He says he was left there for more than three hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told me they knew I had problems with Russia and it was so. I came to Georgia as a refugee, and they threatened me that if I do not cooperate with them they would send me to Russia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that he was to leave Georgia on January 18 but he wasn\u2019t allowed to fly. No-one explained to him the reason.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t do anything wrong,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Muzayev came to Georgia in 2011 and received status as refugee, but in October, 2012, he gave up his refugee status and instead applied for Georgian citizenship. He became citizen in spring 2013.<\/p>\n
Aiub Borchashvili, from the village Jokola, who represents the organization Vainakh for Human Rights, told daily newspaper Rezonansi that a few months ago, he was also brought to some office in Tbilisi, where he was told that if he didn\u2019t testify against several former Interior Ministry officials, they would hand him over to Russian special services.<\/p>\n
He says Muslims have recently been pressured and many of them have problems during crossing the border, but no-one explains why.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to call to thousands of government bodies, unless you are let go,\u201d he says. Borchashvili assumes that it has to do with their religion.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the people keep staring at us. Due to our religion we have long beard, and people look at us with suspect and irony.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says he thinks that there is an attitude among the counterintelligence community of negative attitude towards the Pankisi Muslims.<\/p>\n
Borchashvili also notes that Chechen refugees are also threatened, but they are afraid and don\u2019t speak out about it.<\/p>\n
Unofficially, 12 000 Chechens fled to Georgia in 1999 during the Second Chechen War, but only a few hundred refugees are left.<\/p>\n
Source:<\/strong> Democracy&Freedom Watch<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the Chechens in Pankisi Gorge close to the Russian border say they are blackmailed and harassed by Georgian counterintelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"views":263,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11056"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11059,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions\/11059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}