Gali (town)

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Gali is a town in Abkhazia, Georgia’s breakaway region 77 km southeast to Sukhumi and bordering with the rest of Georgia. It is the centre of Gali district (known to UN personnel as the Gali sector).

The territory of modern Gali district constituted the main part of a medieval Georgian principality of Samurzakhano, which gained virtual independence of the western Georgian principality of Samegrelo (aka Odishi) in the 17th–18th centuries.

Gali district was included in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia in 1922.

Gali district was populated almost entirely by Georgians in the pre-war Abkhazia. The majority of Georgians fled the district following the inter-ethnic clashes in 1993–1994 and again in 1998. However, Gali remains largely populated by the ethnic Georgians.

Together with the Kodori Valley, Gali district is one of the two real troublespots while the situation is relatively peaceful in the rest of Abkhazia. It was a battlefield of the 1998 escalation of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.

[edit] 1998 Gali clashes

Gali Events (sometimes called Gali Tragedy in the Georgian sources)

In April–May 1998, the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict escalated once again in the Gali district. Several hundreds of Abkhaz forces entered the villages still populated by Georgians to support the separatist-held parliamentary elections. Georgians resisted with the help of guerilla fighters (a paramilitary unit “White Legion” and the Forest Brothers) from neighboring Samegrelo region. Despite the criticism from opposition, Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia, refused to deploy troops against Abkhazia. A ceasefire was negotiated on May 20. The hostilities resulted in hundreds of casualities from both sides and additional 20.000 Georgian refugees.

[edit] Current situation

In the Georgian-populated areas in Gali district, where local authorities are almost exclusively made up of ethnic Abkhaz, human right situation remains precarious. The United Nations and other international organizations have been fruitlessly urging the Abkhaz de facto authorities "to refrain from adopting measures incompatible with the right to return and with international human rights standards, such as discriminatory legislation… [and] to cooperate in the establishment of a permanent international human rights office in Gali and to admit United Nations civilian police without further delay."^[1]