Ahead of the new academic year, curriculum of the Armenian language at Armenian secondary schools in Javakhk, Georgia, was reduced, which, according to National Assembly deputy Shirak Torosyan, is another attempt by Georgian authorities to trigger another wave of emigration of Armenians from Javakhk, and to distort the national identity of Armenians living there.

Torosyan, Chairman of the Javakhk Compatriotic Union, who was banned to enter Georgia by Georgian authorities with the reasoning that he was threatening the national security of Georgia, compares the recent tendencies of reducing the Armenian language curriculum at Armenian schools in Georgia.

“The Armenian language curriculum at high schools during Soviet period was eight hours weekly. Later the Georgian authorities made it four hours, and now they want to make it only two hours weekly,” Torosyan says.

Armenian-populated Samtskhe-Javakheti, a southwestern province of Georgia, has about 120,000 Armenian residents, who constantly complain about various pressures put on them by Georgian authorities, who are accused of discrimination against them as a national minority.

Torosyan says that the examination of a mother tongue (the Armenian language in this case) is not included in Georgia’s final exams list for 12th grade students.

“This aims to eradicate the Armenian language, as regional language and as a means of communication for Javakhki-Armenians, whereas we constantly struggle to make Armenian be recognized as the second state language in the region,” Torosyan says, adding that it is driven by the international legal norms of national minorities, and especially by the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Torosyan also claims that the Georgian special services have recently formed a “blacklist” of Armenian teachers, mainly consisting of teachers of the Armenian language and Armenian history, who are already dismissed.
“They [teachers of the Armenian language and Armenian history] got no explanation or reasoning why they had been dismissed; instead, they were warned that no matter where they appealed, nothing would be changed,” Torosyan alleges.