(CN) — Europe's human rights court on Tuesday found Russia guilty of committing a wide range of crimes, including killings, while policing the boundaries of the breakaway Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The decision by the European Court of Human Rights came in one of several cases brought by Georgia over Russia's occupation of its two regions following a brief war in August 2008.
In its ruling, the Strasbourg-based court said the border incidents were “sufficiently numerous and interconnected” to conclude that Russia was allowing systematic violations to take place.
Since the 2008 war, Russia-backed police and border guards have been accused of harassing, illegally arresting and detaining, beating, torturing and killing ethnic Georgians trying to cross or living along border areas.
After invading Georgia, Moscow recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The war in Georgia foreshadowed Moscow's move to seize Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014. In both Georgia and Ukraine, Moscow claimed it needed to protect Russian-speaking populations.
The Strasbourg court said Russia was violating the rights of ethnic Georgians by imposing restrictions on movement across the regions' boundaries and thus forcing people to use dangerous alternative routes.
The borders have been hardened with fences, barbed wire and guard towers and crossing is permitted only at official posts, the court said.
But obtaining documents to cross the borders can be difficult and many locals living along them find it inconvenient to travel to the crossing points, the court said.
“People had been deprived of land, which they used for farming, families had been separated and children had been forced to choose between learning in Russian or making long and perilous journeys to Georgian-controlled territory to attend school,” the court said in a news release.
The court said seven ethnic Georgian residents of Abkhazia had died while trying to cross the boundary lines by alternative routes to collect their pension or medication from Georgian-controlled territory.
It received information about more than 2,800 cases of people getting arrested for “illegally crossing” the borders, the court said.
Villagers in South Ossetia who rely on income from livestock and farming lost access to pastures without warning or compensation, the court said.
Families on different sides of the boundary lines were forced to undertake long or covert journeys, the court said. In some cases, the boundaries left village cemeteries inaccessible and behind barbed wire, it added.
In Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Russian language gradually replaced Georgian in schools and this compelled some children to cross the border at unofficial crossing points to go to school in Georgian-controlled territory. This resulted “in their regularly being held or detained by Russian border guards,” the court said.
“The overwhelming majority of the international community” considers the Russia-installed borders illegal under international law. For its part, Georgia views the borders “as the occupation line,” the court said.
But it is doubtful the court ruling will have much effect because Russia withdrew from the court's jurisdiction after its parliament quit the Council of Europe and stopped recognizing the European Convention on Human Rights following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia did not submit written observations in connection with Tuesday's ruling.
In April 2023, the court said it had jurisdiction over this case because the charges of border abuse took place before Russia ceased being a party to the convention on Sept. 16, 2022.
Even before it quit the Strasbourg court, Moscow had largely stopped complying with the mounting number of rulings against it and largely quit paying fines ordered by the court.
Nonetheless, the court's trials looking into human rights violations in Russia and in other European countries with disturbing track records, such as Turkey, serve to bring attention to cases that are often rejected by domestic courts.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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