We are very concerned that in Abkhazia intensifies extremely dangerous trend, which in the past was alien to our society. We are talking about cases of killings of relatives of a member of his family who, in their opinion, was a disgrace to the family. As we know, never before in Abkhazia did not kill people, retreating from moral principles, but only expelled them from the community.
According to available information, in different parts of the country there were several cases where women on unproven charges of violation of moral standards of killing their close relatives, availing itself of the Abkhazian traditions. The last case in Gudauta shocking: a young mother, whose “guilt” was not proven, but only assumed on the basis of multiple TEXTS, native was taken from the husband’s family, and a week later she allegedly hanged herself, leaving a little daughter, suffering from serious vision problems. There are very good reasons to doubt that the young woman was shitting myself.
Such family violence is absolutely unacceptable for a democratic state because the violate the basic rights of the individual and contribute to the destruction of family values. The presumption of innocence, which is one of the main principles of judicial proceedings in Abkhazia provides for the right of every person to a fair trial and protection of honour and dignity. The incident described above is a gross violation of the Laws and the Constitution and should not go unnoticed. In this regard, we appeal to law enforcement bodies with the request to thoroughly investigate the incident and take appropriate measures to prevent such killings in the future, which is inevitable, if the perpetrators are not punished. It is absolutely necessary to investigate not only the incident described above, but other similar cases have occurred in recent time, because impunity will inevitably lead to the deterioration of a criminogenic situation in the country.
We, the members of the Club “Women’s initiative”, we would also like to initiate a wider public debate on this issue in order to ensure that similar atrocities in a bad tradition.
Association of women of Abkhazia
The movement “Mothers for peace and social justice”
The center for humanitarian programs
The Sukhumi Youth House
Centre “World without violence” named after Zurab Achba
Children’s Fund of Abkhazia
Charitable Foundation “Asarco”
