South Ossetian Foreign Minister Dmitriy Medoev’s Answer to South Ossetia Newspaper

Q:Representatives of the European Court of Human Rights has recently announced that they didn’t find grounds for examining several lawsuits, related to the events of the armed aggression in August 2008, in which citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia accused the Georgian armed forces of life-threating actions. How could you comment on these actions of the ECHR in relation to the South Ossetian citizens?

A:The decision made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was quite predictable and has once again revealed the hypocrisy of the Western countries and their craving for double standards, which unfortunately cut across a range of states considering themselves as responsible members of the international community.

Despite the fact that the EU Commission's report prepared by Heidi Tagliavini, a Swiss diplomat, clearly states that it was the Georgian side that had unleashed the large-scale war against South Ossetia, and the blame for the beginning of the war was on Tbilisi, ECHR found it necessary to dismiss legal lawsuits by the people who were under existential threat in August 2008.

We consider this decision of the Strasbourg Court as a biased attempt to throw the situation back, aimed at justifying and silencing the aggressive acts of Georgia.

Nevertheless, South Ossetia will fight for fair and impartial hearing of the cases of its citizens.