Mingrelian Nationalist Party

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The Mingrelian Nationalist Party (Mingrelian: Margaluri Nacionalisturi Partiashi; Georgian: მეგრული ნაციონალისტური პარტია, Megruli Nacionalisturi Partia), MNP, is a Russia-based quasi-political party which advocates the secession of the province Mingrelia from Georgia.

Mingrelians are linguistically different, but ethnically and culturally intimately related to other Georgians, and consider themselves as Georgians.

The MNP was founded in Russia, 1995, by a certain Nugzar Dzhodzhua, a Mingrelian from Abkhazia (secessionist region within Georgia), who made a scandalous name by declaring on Abkhaz television in 1989, that Mingrelians were not Georgians and had been subjected to forcible "Georgianization" for centuries. These claims, propagated also by Abkhaz nationalists, caused a great discontent among the Mingrelians that led to a series of incidents with Dzhodzhua forcing him to move to Russia.

The MNP is not a registered political organization in Georgia. The party is hardly known either in Mingrelia and the rest of the country, or elsewhere in the World, and there are no reports about its current activities. It has merely had a presence on the Internet, confined to its website.