Yerevan/Mediamax/. Armenians living in Javakheti are massively deprived of Georgian citizenship in case they hold another citizenship - Russian or Armenian.

''Rezonansi'' newspaper reported this today, Mediamax's correspondent reports from Tbilisi.

Head of “Multinational Georgia” NGO Arnold Stepanyan confirmed that over the past 5 months, the process involved ''2-3 thousand citizens of Armenian descent''.

According to him, it extremely complicates their lives as after they are deprived of Georgian citizenship they don't have the right to stay in the country for 90 days in a row.

At the same time, Arnold Stepanyan noted that the local authorities recently started considering the emerging problems and issuing temporary stay permissions to those who don't have Georgian citizenship. He noted that the mass deprivation of Georgian citizenship of Javakheti Armenians creates ''additional risks'' in the region.

''We're dealing with nonprofessionalism or sabotage within the authorities'', conceded Arnold Stepanyan.

Meanwhile, Georgian Ministry of Justice told the newspaper that the information on mass deprivation of citizenship of Armenians was not true.

However, the leader of Free Georgia Party Kakha Kukava who had studied the issue confirmed to ''Rezonansi'' that Javakheti Armenians were massively deprived of Georgian citizenship. The politician said that he informed the central authorities about it but they hadn't responded yet. 

‘'It is a sensitive issue and cautious approaches need to be taken. We need to carry out explanatory work with the people and tell them they can choose which citizenship to have to avoid provocations in future'', political scientist Soso Tsintsadze said.