Today, April 9, Georgia remembering the victims of the bloody Soviet System, which for many decades, brutally suppressed the desire of the Georgian people to return their independence eliminated by the Bolsheviks, IPN reports with reference to a press release issueded by the Embassy of Georgia in Moldova.
„Exactly 30 years ago, on April 9, 1989 the Soviet army brutally dispersed a large pro-independence rally on Rustaveli Avenue, in the heart of Georgian capital. Twenty-one people were killed, including women and youth. Hundreds of citizens were poisoned. The tragedy is referred as the „Tbilisi Massacre”, the press release said.
According to the document, Georgia’s independence movement became active in 1988. Demonstrations and hunger strikes started in 1989. On April 4, students from various universities declared a hunger strike, calling for national disobedience, secession of Georgia from the USSR, full sovereignty.
The movement for independence and democracy, powered by the aspiration to return to Western civilization brought together thousands of protesters. Protesters eventually gathered in front of the government building on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi. They organized a peaceful demonstration and hunger strikes. Thousands of citizens came from the capital Tbilisi and from the rest of Georgia, including from the Abkhazia and Tskhinvali/South Ossetia regions.
„In the evening of April 8, a Soviet general ordered mobilization of USSR forces within the territory of Georgia and beyond its borders. The events of April 9 were the culmination of weeks of demonstrations for Georgia’s independence. Soviet troops brutally dispersed the pro-independence rally, killing twenty-one people, mostly women and youth, in a wild frenzy. The youngest victims of the tragedy were 16 years old. Hundreds of citizens were poisoned by the toxic agents Soviet troops employed against the demonstrators. From clinical and toxicological evidence, experts later concluded that the tearing agents and a prohibited toxic agent, chloropicrin, were used”, the press release said.
The document also notes that the April 9 killings greatly accelerated Georgia's quest for independence; it also ended Soviet domination. Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in the streets after the massacre. On March 31, 1991, Georgians motivated by the April 9 events voted in a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union. With a 90.5 percent turnout, 99 percent voted in favor of Georgia’s independence.
On April 9, 1991 on the second anniversary of the tragedy, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia proclaimed Georgian sovereignty and independence from the Soviet Union based on the results of a nationwide referendum.
