The Patriarchate of Georgia considers the Tchela village events as an attempt to arouse aversion and hostility in the public and releases a statement regarding the issue. Deacon Davit Sharashenidze introduced the statement to the public.

“Some statements released in regard to the events which developed in the village of Tchela in Adigeni region, make us think that certain forces want to display this occurrence as an insult to religious feelings, as something violating the Muslims’ rights and they do everything in their power to incite the same sentiments in ordinary people. I address our flesh and blood, to the Muslim citizens of Tchela and non-Georgian Muslims also; I want to remind them of the fact that we are the children of a country where the Muslims were never insulted or oppressed; even from the furthest antiquity when our small, long-suffering nation tried to protect itself from the Crescent invasion, our Muslim residents peacefully lived among us. Thank God that now we are at an even higher stage of development and more cherish our relationship with our Muslim brothers.

And the events unfolding in our land now are only an attempt to arouse animosity and antagonism between our people on a religious basis. This very much resembles the events that they helped to develop in Nigvziani, Tsintskharo and Samtatskharo. These forces aim at opposing the Christian and Muslim population of our county and in this way they discredit and affront our Church and state. Every single person keeping a close eye on this phenomenon will realize this. I appeal the Muslim leaders living in our country to fight against those provocative actions instead of assist them. Today it depends on you and only you what kind of position your people will have. We, on our part, now make and will continue to make strenuous effort to preserve our benevolent attitude to our Muslim brothers, religious leaders and the Muslim population in general. However, the core precondition of achieving this goal is to find real reasons that caused this misunderstanding; we must find the criminals who by taking this illegal step, created tensions in the public; and finally we must create such a legislative base that will make everyone realize what actions they can perform and what is forbidden for them. All this will definitely exclude any further escalation of conflicts between us.

May God and Virgin Mary bless our country and people”.