16 Die, 200 Hurt in Soviet Clashes : 5-Day Nationalist Protest Halted by Troops in Georgian Republic Capital

Sixteen people were reported killed in pre-dawn clashes Sunday between nationalist demonstrators and security forces in Tbilisi, the capital of the southern Soviet Republic of Georgia, in one of the worst incidents in the country’s continuing political unrest.

Authorities said the 16 were killed and about 200 other people were injured when police and soldiers sought to clear an estimated 8,000 demonstrators from the square in front of the principal government buildings in Tbilisi and end five days of nationalist protests there.

As the security forces, armed with truncheons, staves and soldiers’ small entrenching shovels, tried to break up the crowd, which had been aroused by a day and a night of nationalistic speeches, many people fought back, according to witnesses. A wild melee followed with the demonstrators battling the police and soldiers with whatever weapons they could find.

Clubbed or Trampled

Some of the victims appeared to have been clubbed to death, witnesses said; others were killed when they fell and were trampled by the crowd.

“The extremists wanted blood and attacked the security forces,” Georgian authorities said in a statement broadcast on local television. The crowd had been whipped into “mass hysteria” during the prolonged rally, the statement said, blaming “provocateurs” for the clashes.

More than 100 civilians and 91 police officers and soldiers were injured, according to a Georgian government statement. Dissidents charged that the actual casualties, including the number of dead, were perhaps three to four times the official figures. At least five of the city’s hospitals were full of those injured in the fighting, according to a physician reached by telephone in Tbilisi.

The clash was one of the bloodiest since nationalist unrest broke out in neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan in February, 1988, and the action by the security forces was perhaps the harshest since troops opened fire on striking workers in the city of Novocherkassk in 1962.

By nightfall on Sunday, Tbilisi was reported calm. A curfew had been imposed, armed troops in battle dress were patrolling the streets, and roadblocks had been set up with tanks and armored cars to seal off the center of the city, which has a population of 1.2 million.

But nationalist leaders, many of whom were arrested on Sunday while others went into hiding, called for a campaign of civil disobedience to reinforce a general strike that began in Tbilisi late last week.

Georgian and national authorities appeared shaken by the events, calling the deaths a “tragedy” and ordering an investigation into how the violence developed.

The Georgian Communist Party leadership gathered in an emergency session late Sunday to discuss the events; the party only Saturday had ordered the security forces to take “further measures to consolidate public order and discipline.”

Coming against a background of spreading nationalist unrest, however, the clash in Tbilisi seems certain to add to the fears of many here that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political liberalization has released uncontrollable forces, particularly in the national republics such as Georgia.

In a report on the incident, the official Soviet news agency Tass said that “extremist” speakers at the all-night rally, a continuation of meetings that had begun five days ago, demanded “the elimination of Soviet power in Georgia, the creation of a provisional government of the republic and its withdrawal from the Soviet Union.”

“Leaders of the so-called ‘National Liberation Movement of Georgia’ began to announce their plans for the seizure of power,” Tass said. “Threats were heard in the crowd about dealing severely with Communists and representatives of the authorities.”

When appeals for calm failed, Georgian authorities decided about 3 a.m. Sunday “to stop the anti-Soviet, anti-social gathering and to clear the square outside the government house,” Tass said.

Although the army and police had not used their weapons and had been instructed to use the minimum of force, “extremist groups armed with stones, sticks and metal objects offered fierce resistance,” according to Tass.

Georgian nationalists gave a different account, calling the security forces’ action unprovoked and unnecessary. The rally, although spirited, had been peaceful, they contended, and there had been no violence at any of last week’s protests.

Police, Soldiers ‘Like Beasts’

“The police and the soldiers provoked this violence themselves,” Leda Archvadze, a Georgian activist, said by telephone from Tbilisi, quoting her brother-in-law, Zviad Gamasakhurdia, a prominent Georgian dissident, who witnessed the clash and was later detained by police in a roundup of nationalist leaders. “They threw themselves on our people like beasts, and our people could not do anything.

“There are many, many more dead and wounded than they have said. They dare not tell the truth about these events.”

Another witness, who was in a building overlooking Lenin Square but who asked not to be quoted by name, said that the troops were enraged when members of the crowd began pelting them with stones. The police tried to hold the soldiers back but failed, she said, and many were trampled in what she called “a mad charge” into the crowd.

“They took their shovels and just began hacking at people,” she said. “This is the fault of the authorities for bringing in troops. Our police had things under control. Moscow must have ordered it.”

Calling in military and police reinforcements, authorities succeeded later Sunday in clearing the square and most of central Tbilisi of demonstrators, whose number had ranged up to 100,000 over the past five days.

Hundreds Reported Arrested

Hundreds of people were reported by dissident sources to have been arrested as the rally was dispersed, according to witnesses in Tbilisi, and then in a subsequent roundup of most of the principal nationalist leaders.

“Measures are being taken for preventing new anti-social developments,” Tass said, confirming the arrests and other actions by the security forces.

Tensions had been rising in Tbilisi for more than six months as Georgian nationalists, taking advantage of the political reforms under Gorbachev, have renewed their demands for greater local control of the republic and its economy, increased use of the Georgian language and recognition of Georgian cultural traditions.

Protests, some involving more than 100,000 people, have become routine in Tbilisi, and the Georgian authorities have dealt with them largely through compromises on lesser issues as they tried to dampen the increasing demand for independence.

The current confrontation grew out of a call by a small Muslim minority, the Abkhazis, who now have an autonomous region within Georgia, for their own republic. Their complaint, similar to that of the Georgians against the predominantly Russian leadership of the Soviet Union, was that they suffer discrimination because of their different language, religion and cultural traditions.

New Round of Protests

Georgians took the Abkhazian demand, however, as a Moscow-sponsored attempt to carve up the republic, punishing them for their own nationalism, and they mounted a new round of protest rallies in Tbilisi last week to demonstrate their opposition.

In an attempt to prevent future unrest, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s Parliament, on Saturday adopted a decree making it illegal to insult or discredit the government or to advocate its overthrow or that of the country’s political system, according to Tass.

Although the new legislation replaces measures frequently used in the past to silence political dissidents and is intended to be part of the general political reforms here, it gives the authorities sweeping powers to clamp down on open criticism of state bodies or public officials.

“Public insults or the discrediting” of officials or state institutions can be punished by prison sentences of up to three years and fines up to $3,300, according to a Tass summary of the decree.

The same punishment will apply to “public appeals for undermining and overthrowing the Soviet state and social system, as well as the publication or circulation of materials containing such ideas.”

The legislation also makes “deliberate actions aimed at kindling inter-ethnic or racial hostility” a crime.