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Occupiers declare war against Georgian language in Abkhazia

According to data from 2020, about 225,000 people live in the territory of Abkhazia. Of these, 47,000 are ethnic Georgians and most of them, about 45,000, live in the Gali region. Yet, as of today, no Georgian-language school is functioning in occupied Abkhazia.

Since the beginning of the past school year, teaching in Georgian in Georgian-language schools in Gali (in occupied Abkhazia) has been stopped, and education will now be conducted in Russian. Seventeen-year-old Natia K. is an 11th grade student of one of the schools in the low-lying area of Gali. Since September 1st, she has been taught Georgian as a foreign language at school.

April 11, 2024 - Tamuna Shonia - Issue 3 2024MagazineStories and ideas

An abandoned railway station in Abkhazia. Photo: Vyacheslav Makaryev

“We are all happy to go to school here, because it is the only place where we can gather, however, don’t really enjoy school. I feel humiliated, it would have been much better if I had graduated from school in Georgian last year because now we are no longer allowed to use the Georgian language,” Natia says.

According to the decision of the de facto ministry of education of occupied Abkhazia, the teaching of Georgian in the schools of the Gali district has been banned up to the 11th grade. The Abkhazian side made this decision in 2015, and the implementation process has been ongoing until now. The reduction of Georgian language schools started in 1994, after the war in 1992-93. For example, before the war, more than 50 Georgian schools functioned in the Gali region. Since 2015, this number has been decreased to 11. From this period on, according to the decision of the de-facto government of Abkhazia, the change started mainly from the primary grades, and teaching in schools gradually moved to the Russian language. The Gali region of occupied Abkhazia is mainly inhabited by a Georgian-speaking population.

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