The Riots
A few days before the scheduled exams, several thousand of Abkhaz organized a mass anti-Georgian rally in Sukhumi. On July 12, 1989, the Aydgylara activists led the demonstrators, including armed groups, into the attack on the building of the local Georgian-language newspaper, forcing it to shut down. Soon, the school building which was expected to house the Georgian university was also surrounded by the crowd. The local militsiya (police) officials ignored calls from desperate employees from the besieged building and replaced, early on July 15, policemen of Georgian nationality guarding the university with Abkhaz officers. The same day, a small police unit sent to Sukhumi from Tbilisi to help restore order was disarmed by the Abkhaz militia without any hindrance from the local police. Meanwhile, Georgians gathered into a counter-rally to prevent the Abkhaz from disrupting the university.
While the reports are conflicting on which group first resorted to violence, with both sides blaming each other of starting fighting, the ensuing events would quickly degenerate into an open inter-ethnic warfare and eventually into the War in Abkhazia. Georgians reported that a group of armed Abkhaz opened fire on the Georgian demonstration in Rustaveli Park, while Abkhaz claimed that they engaged in fighting after an Abkhaz photographer was beaten by Georgians while trying to penetrate the university building. Either way, on late July 16, a crowd of five thousand Abkhaz, many of whom were armed, surged into the building. Several members of the Georgian exam commission were beaten up, and the school was looted.
This set off a chain of events that produced further casualties and destruction as the both sides engaged in armed fighting for several days to come. That evening, Abkhaz and Georgians began mobilizing all over Abkhazia and western Georgia. The Kodori Svans, ethnic Georgian subgroup from northeastern Abkhazia, and Abkhaz from the town of Tkvarcheli clashed in a shooting spree that lasted all night and intermittently for several days afterward. Meanwhile 30,000 Georgians from western Georgia, particularly from Mingrelia, and the predominantly Georgian Gali district in southern Abkhazia, began marching toward Sukhumi, led by the eminent Soviet-era dissident Merab Kostava. The authorities reported that the Abkhaz crowds attacked police posts to get access to weapons, but evidence suggests that official sympathy prevented the local law enforcement agencies from offering resistance to the "attackers". Moreover, a local procurator in Ochamchire ordered the return of Abkhaz hunting weapons. Hence, the Abkhaz armed groups were able to organize picket and block the Georgian marchers (some of whom were armed as well) at a bridge outside the ethnically mixed town of Ochamchire. Kostava stopped the march, averting more bloodshed, and soon the Soviet Interior troops were invoked to reestablish order.
The July events in Abkhazia left at least eighteen dead and 448 injured, of whom, according to official accounts, 302 were Georgians. Although a continuous presence of the Interior Ministry troops maintained a precarious peace in the region, outburst of violence did occur, and the Soviet government made no progress toward solving any of the interethnic problems. The Georgians suspected the attack on their university was intentionally staged by the Abkhaz secessionists in order to provoke a large-scale violence that would prompt Moscow to declare a martial law in the region, thus depriving the government in Tbilisi of any control over the autonomous structures in Abkhazia. At the same time, they accused the Soviet government of manipulating ethnic issues to curb Georgia's otherwise irrepressible independence movement. On the other hand, the Abkhaz claimed that the new university was an instrument in the hands of Georgians to reinforce their cultural dominance in the region, and continued to demand that the investigation of the July events be turned over to Moscow and that no branch of Tbilisi State University be opened in Sukhumi.
However, as neither side felt strong enough to force the issue militarily at that time, the Georgian-Abkhaz antagonism had largely been relegated to the legislatures by July 1990, making Abkhazia a field of "war of laws" until the armed hostilities broke out in August 1992.
Read more about this topic: 1989 Sukhumi Riots