12. August 2008
The European Council of Artists (ECA) as an international umbrella organisation of professional artists’ associations from 26 nations across Europe is horrified at Russia’s aggression against the sovereign Republic of Georgia waged on the pre-text of concern for the non-Georgian population of South Ossetia and Abkhazia which form an integral part of Georgia and whose differences with Georgia’s democratically elected government must be solely solved internally and on a bilateral basis.
The ECA is working to see a 21st century multi-national Europe unified by culture and common heritage and cannot accept practices that belong to the past and caused so much national and individual strife.
Led namely by concern for the civilian population, the ECA believes that a stop of all combat operations, genuine armistice and peaceful negotiations will settle the situation and allow the local peoples including artists to live peacefully and creatively.