text: The interior ministry’s financial police raided Vakhtangisi, a village is on the Georgian side of the frontier with Azerbaijan, on January 20 in an operation to confiscate counterfeit goods. However, a fight broke out, and three locals and some policemen were wounded in the ensuing shootout.
  The financial police told IWPR that following last summer’s closure of the Ergneti market inside the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone, which had been a major base for customs-free goods, the main smuggling route into Georgia is now from Azerbaijan at Sadakhlo and Krasny Most.
  “That is where most of the goods which are sold in Tbilisi and other cities, in markets, supermarkets and even fashionable shops comes from,” said Tea Rusikashvili, head of the press office of the financial police.
  Rusikashvili, who took part in the anti-smuggling operations in Gardabani region, told IWPR, “We confiscated black market electrical goods worth eight million lari (4.4 million US dollars) from just one family in Gachiani. They opened fire on the police and we had to call up 300 special forces soldiers.”
  When the police travelled to the next village, Vakhtangisi, Rusikashvili said that they met fierce resistance.
  “The police were following a minibus carrying smuggled goods,” she said. “Inside the village the driver vanished but the residents did not let us take the vehicle, they attacked us with stones and Molotov cocktails. One woman spat in my face and pulled my hair. We had to take shelter at the frontier post.”
  It was during this episode that the police opened fire and wounded three locals. An investigation is continuing into the incident.
  The Azerbaijani villagers complain that the authorities are cutting off their livelihood without giving them any alternative means of earning their living.
  “Now apart from all our other problems we’ve been condemned to live in hunger,” said Orujev. “We can’t bring in big cargoes because we have to pay high taxes on them and you can’t earn anything from small cargoes.”
  Rusikashvili told IWPR that corrupt customs officers had exacerbated the situation. “Importing goods worth one million laris, some owners declared it as a cargo worth one thousand lari and did great damage to the state budget,” she said.
  “Of course the customs played their part in this. All this business starts on the other side of the Azerbaijani border near Lagodekhi, and three customs officers have been arrested there.”
  But local Azerbaijanis are not convinced by these arguments, and say they are the victims of an ethnically motivated campaign to make them feel unwelcome in Georgia.
  “Why are [the authorities] always breaking into the houses of Azerbaijanis and punishing only them?” asked Orujev.