Thirteen people were injured on Friday during a stormy demonstration in Abkhazia, which aimed to prevent the examination of an economic agreement between Moscow and this pro-Russian separatist region of Georgia, Russian news agencies reported.
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According to videos broadcast by the Russian agency Ria Novosti, clashes broke out between demonstrators and police outside Parliament before they entered, without violence this time, the building, where the deputies were to examine the processed. They also entered an adjoining presidential administration building, according to the Tass agency.
Thirteen people were injured in these clashes, two of whom were hospitalized, health services cited by Ria Novosti said.
The demonstrators were protesting against the ratification of an agreement allowing Russian companies to invest in Abkhazia, a region located between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea shore. The parliamentary session where the ratification was to be examined on Friday was immediately postponed, Ria Novosti said, and the ratification bill was withdrawn, the presidential administration announced. The president of this separatist region, Aslan Bjania, regretted that the demonstrations “ once again confront the republic with big problems » and ruled out leaving his post.
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Bridge blockages in Sukhumi
Demonstrators have already blocked bridges in this territory for a few hours this week, around Sukhumi, a city of some 65,000 inhabitants, after the arrest of five opponents of the agreement with Moscow, who were finally released. The opposition fears that this agreement signed at the end of October will open the way to the acquisition by Russians of apartments in Abkhazia, in the numerous seaside towns on the Black Sea coast. The sale of residential real estate to foreigners was banned in 1995 in Abkhazia, populated by around 240,000 inhabitants.
For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry said its “ concern ” in the face of these tensions, and regretted that the opposition had “ not considered possible to resolve its differences with the legitimate power of the country through civilized and respectful dialogue » and that she has “ exceeded the legal framework » and provoked “ an escalation of the conflict “.
At the end of a brief war which saw its army enter Georgian territory in 2008, Moscow recognized the independence of two separatist regions bordering its territory, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia has since maintained a military presence there. Abkhazia unilaterally declared independence from Georgia upon the fall of the USSR and defended it during a war against Georgian forces in the early 1990s, with unofficial support from Moscow.
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