December 13, 2024, marks 10 years since the explosion of the ancient Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani gold mine. Over time, amid new challenges and political crises, Sakdrisi has been consigned to oblivion. Evidently, state investigative bodies have neither investigated the real preconditions for the forceful removal of monument status from Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani as a site of national significance without any legal basis, nor has anyone been held accountable for the illegal explosion of the mine.
This article will briefly remind you of all the illegal actions that took place just ten years ago regarding Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani, specifically during just two days, December 12-13, 2014, which ultimately led to the destruction of the world’s oldest gold mine.
The chronology of December 12-13, 2014, is as follows:
On December 12, 2014, within one day, the then-existing Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia and its subsidiary National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation, based on applications from the gold mining license holder company RMG Gold, carried out 17 illegal actions and made 4 illegal decisions regarding the ancient Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani gold mine. As a result, on December 13, 2014, RMG Gold completely illegally exploded the ancient Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani gold mine.
However unusual it may seem, on December 12, 2014, in its application to the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection, RMG Gold requested legally required consent for the dismantling (removal) of the Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani archaeological site, not the removal of monument status, without which making a decision about dismantling the site is inadmissible. However, the Cultural Heritage Agency proactively, on its own initiative, removed Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani’s monument status, which was followed by the decision to dismantle and remove the site.
To give subsequent legal force to the Agency’s decision and finally remove Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani’s monument status, the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia compressed into 39 minutes a decision that should have taken one month through administrative proceedings, and on the same day, after working hours at 19:09, sent its decision to the Agency. Based on the decision received from the Ministry, the Agency gave RMG Gold permission to dismantle (remove) the site.
The next day, on December 13, 2014, under the name of archaeological site dismantling-removal, RMG Gold exploded the ancient Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani gold mine, despite the fact that the archaeological site had not yet been fully excavated and studied, which the Law on Cultural Heritage considers an essential prerequisite before beginning the dismantling-removal process.
No relevant employee of the Cultural Heritage Protection Agency attended the dismantling-removal process of the archaeological site – Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani – which was actually an explosion, and the commencement of gold mining by the company. The state sent the first monitoring group to Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani almost one month after the explosion, on January 9, 2015, when a large part of the archaeological site no longer physically existed.
The mining company did not have permission issued by the relevant competent state authority that would have allowed conducting explosive works at Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani on December 13, 2014. Moreover, such permission could not have physically existed because RMG Gold exploded an archaeological site, not just a gold mining quarry.
Despite the fact that as a result of the explosion of Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani, there was a crime under the Criminal Code of Georgia, which resulted in at least the destruction of an archaeological site, state investigative bodies have done nothing to study the issue and conduct an objective investigation on the alleged crime. Similarly, no criminal liability has been established for possible official misconduct by high-ranking officials and ordinary employees of the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia and its subsidiary National Agency for Cultural Heritage Protection on December 12, 2014.
Separately, it should be noted about the likely formal and informal influences on the illegal decisions made by the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia and the National Agency for Cultural Heritage Protection during the destruction process of the ancient Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani gold mine on December 12, 2014, without which the state would not/could not have made the decision to destroy Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani in less than one full working day.
As time has shown, under the Georgian Dream governance, Sakdrisi-Kachaghiani was only the beginning of the illegality in cultural heritage protection that soon became irreversible. After Sakdrisi came Panorama Tbilisi, hotel construction in Batumi’s old boulevard, damaged frescoes of Gelati… Unfortunately, this list goes on.
Many years of work by international scientists established that the ancient mine (dated likely 3-rd or 4-th century BC), located in Georgia, represented a special object of cultural heritage. “Sakdrisi is the oldest gold mine worldwide and therefore a unique heritage site not only of Georgia, but of mankind” – said the President of two associations – German Association of Archaeology and Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Prof. Dr. Hermann Parzinger in his 2013 public letter. Various international scientists have examined the heritage site, including scientists from France, Switzerland, Austria, and Great Britain. Yet, the cultural heritage site of world significance was exploded by RMG Gold, as a result of illegal decisions, within the “Georgian Dream” governance.
