Zhiuli Shartava

Who was Zhiuli Shartava?

Zhiuli Shartava was a Georgian politician and the Head of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia who was killed by Abkhaz militants during the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Abkhazia in 1993.

Shartava was born on March 7, 1944 in Sukhumi, Abkhaz ASSR. An engineer by education, he was elected to the Parliament of Georgia in 1992. Shartava chaired the legal Council of Ministers and the Council of Self-Defence of Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia during the Georgian-Abkhazian War in 1993. When the city of Sukhumi fell to the Russian-supported separatist forces on September 27, 1993, Shartava with other members of the Abkhaz Government refused to flee and were captured by the Abkhaz militants. Initially they were promised safety, however Shartava and others from the Council of Ministers were killed by the militants and according to UN report Shartava was excessively tortured. In 2005, American journalist Malcolm Linton displayed his photo materials taken during the war in Abkhazia at the art gallery in Tbilisi, where Shartavas body was identified among the pile of corpses, clearly visible on one of the photographs. On video materials taken during the capture of Sukhumi by the militants, Shartava is carried out from the Government building and physically assaulted, after which he was forced into the van and taken to the outskirts of Sukhumi where he was killed with other Georgian and Abkhaz members of the government and their staff. Shartava's body was handed over to the Georgian side and was buried in the western Georgian city of Senaki. In 1994, Shartava was officially honored as the National Hero of Georgia posthumously in 2004.