Georgia Museum Director Fled to Save Stalin Items
September 3, 2008
The director of the Stalin museum, in Gori, Georgia, says he saved items from the museum by fleeing to the capital, Tbilisi, during the Russian bombing of his country last month, Reuters reported. “Thank God, they didn’t bomb the museum, but there was no guarantee,” Robert Maglakelidze, the director, told Reuters. “We said, ‘Let’s preserve these things for future generations.’ These personal things can’t be replaced.” Mr. Maglakelidze said he loaded his car with some 50 items — including Stalin’s military greatcoat, pen, glasses, sword and pipe — for the trip from Gori, Stalin’s birthplace. In addition to portraits of Stalin, the museum, which opened in 1959, includes the house in which he was born, in 1879, on its grounds. The museum was not significantly damaged in the bombings and is expected to reopen on Monday.
Source: The New York Times, September 2008
www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/arts/design/03arts-GEORGIAMUSEU_BRF.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Hope And Despair On The Streets Of Tbilisi
August 27, 2008
By evening, the rubbish was piling up in front of the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi. There were pots and pans. There were dishes and cutlery. An old refrigerator and a stovetop. A smashed television set.
A young Georgian man, a native of Abkhazia who fled to Tbilisi with his family more than 15 years ago, explained the symbolism. When Russian soldiers looted civilians’ homes during their incursion into Georgia, they took everything, even toilet seats.
“Since they seem to like such things so much, we decided to help them out and bring them more,” he said.
About 200 people gathered at the embassy on the night of August 26 to protest Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s announcement earlier in the day that Moscow would recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
The demonstrators waved Georgian flags. They chanted “Freedom – Yes!” They taunted the Russian soldiers standing guard behind the embassy gates. They carried placards reading: “Today It’s Us. Who Will It Be Tomorrow?” and “Say No To Russian Fascism.” They made speeches in Georgian and Russian.
Drivers passing by honked their horns and shouted words of support — apparently undisturbed by the fact that the protestors spilled off the sidewalk and into the street, clogging rush hour traffic.
Lost All Hope
Prominent among the demonstrators were internally displaced persons, or IDPs, from Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Some 250,000 people, mostly ethnic Georgians, were driven from their homes in Abkhazia when the Moscow-backed province broke free from Tbilisi’s control in the early 1990s. Another 100,000 Georgians fled South Ossetia and the surrounding area in the current conflict.
Fighting back tears, a middle-aged woman from the Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi — half ethnic Georgian, half ethnic Russian — said that with Medvedev’s announcement she’s lost just about all hope she would ever see her home again. She lost her husband and son in the fighting in Abkhazia in the early 1990s and has been living in Tbilisi with relatives for more than a decade.
But others were more optimistic.
“Young people have never given up hope that we will someday return to our homes,” said the young Georgian man from Abkhazia who had earlier explained the meaning of the garbage in front of the embassy.
A group of older women, also IDPs from Abkhazia, joined the conversation.
“We have not given up hope and never will,” one said. “The whole world is now with us. Now everybody sees what the Russians are doing.”
Baring Its Intentions
The contrast of hope and despair that was evident among the protesters at the Russian Embassy reflected the conflicting opinions of Georgians in general, as the conflict between Tbilisi and Moscow enters a new — and potentially very dangerous — phase.
Some are arguing that by pushing things this far, Moscow is baring its intentions for all the world to see — and in the process is waking up the West and the rest of the international community.
Others saw Medvedev’s announcement as proof that Moscow is intent on subjugating Georgia once and for all — whether the West likes it or not.
“They want to re-establish the Soviet Union under a different name,” is a refrain often heard on the streets of Tbilisi these days.
Source: RFE/RL, August 2008
www.rferl.org/content/Hope_And_Despair_On_The_Streets_Of_Tbilisi/1194101.html
Georgian President Urges US and EU to Boycott Russia’s Winter Olympics
August 26, 2008
Mikheil Saakashvili calls for package of sanctions to punish Moscow for invading Georgia
The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has called for US and EU sanctions to punish Russia for invading Georgia, including a boycott of Russia’s 2014 winter Olympics.
Saakashvili said “developed countries” faced a “moral choice” whether to participate in the winter Olympics, which are to be held in Sochi on the Black Sea. The town is 10 miles away from Abkhazia – a breakaway region of Georgia involved in fighting this month.
“I was the biggest supporter of the Olympics. I thought it would calm Russia down. But the fact they got it emboldened them,” Saakashvili said in a late-night interview with the Guardian. “I think it’s a moral choice for developed countries.”
The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has been closely associated with Russia’s successful winter Olympic bid . Any move by the International Olympic Committee to strip Sochi of the games would be a severe humiliation for Putin. Several US members of congress are calling on the IOC to act. Read more
Pope Urges Sides To Keep Their Word On South Ossetia
August 25, 2008
The conflict in South Ossetia has seriously damaged international relations, Pope Benedict has said, while urging parties to keep their promises to resolve the crisis peacefully.
“The international situation in recent weeks has seen a increase in tensions which is very worrying,” the Pontiff told pilgrims attending his weekly Angelus blessing on August 24.
Echoing fears that the conflict between Russia and Georgia could rekindle Cold War tensions between East and West, Benedict said there was a “risk of a deterioration in the climate of trust between nations.”
“Recent events have weakened many people’s confidence that such experiences had been confined definitively to the past,” he said, calling for efforts to defeat “nationalist confrontations which produced so many tragic consequences in other seasons of history.”
The conflict erupted on August 7-8 when Georgia tried to retake the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia. A Russian counteroffensive pushed into Georgia proper, crossing its east-west highway and nearing a Western-backed oil pipeline.
Without directly referring to Russia’s undertaking to withdraw from Georgia, which Western countries says has not yet happened in full accordance with a cease-fire agreement, the pope called on all sides to fulfil their promises.
“Violence must be rejected. The moral force of law; fair and transparent negotiations to settle controversies, starting with those linked to territorial integrity and people’s self-determination; loyalty to one’s word; seeking a common good — these are some of the main paths to go down,” Benedict said.
Source: RFE/RL, August 2008
www.rferl.org/content/Pope_Urges_Sides_To_Keep_Their_Word_On_South_Ossetia/1193451.html
CALL FOR LIVE CHAIN PROTEST IN NEW Y0RK - AUGUST 23, 2008
August 22, 2008
GEORGIAN COMMUNITY COUNCIL PRESS RELEASE
Dear compatriots, Georgians and friends of Georgia!
On Saturday, August 23 at 3 pm, a large scale peace demonstration consisting of 1000-1500 people (and desirably more) will be held in the city of New York.
Because of a specific character of this event, the participants will have to register in order to take part.
If you are willing to participate, you can contact us on the following number 212-738-9487 (Hotline), e-mail: thewaringeorgia@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Again, because of the specific character of the demonstration, the Georgian Community Council kindly asks you to carefully read and follow the instructions, since otherwise we won’t be able to achieve the desired effect.
The participants will position themselves on the West part of the 5th Avenue in the form of life chain. On each ‘block’ a specific number of the participants will be situated. The chain has to be formed exactly at 3 pm, the participants will stand on the sidewalk holding hands for 30 minutes.
It is important for every signed up person to appear at the given place no later than 2.30 pm. Organization and precision is of utter importance, so we ask every participant for extreme punctuality.
Registration for the demonstration will end by Friday 9 pm. After this, names of the participants arranged in alphabetic order, along with the specific address they have to show up at, will be immediately posted on our web site. In case you do not have access to the internet, contact our hotline 212-738-9487 and we will directly give you the necessary information.
Upon the arrival at the given destination every participant will be given an extra large white T-shirt with Georgian flag on it, which you will be able to wear on top of your clothes. If for any reason you are not willing to wear flagged T-shirts, please do not register for the demonstration.
Every block will be assigned an independent captain, who will meet you at the place and distribute the T-shirts according to the list. We kindly ask you to follow the instructions given by the captain of the block.
Participants of the life chain do not need either flags or posters. Plain nature of the demonstration is a significant aspect for reaching the desired goal.
After the chain is disbanded, every participant will peacefully, if possible not in large groups (with the T-shirts on), walk towards the 47th Street (through the Western sidewalk of the 5th Avenue) and then towards the 1st Avenue (passing through the 47th Street), where the ordinary demonstration will be held, lasting for two hours.
The Georgian Community Council kindly asks you (especially the participants of the 5th Avenue chain) to restrain from loud statements and in particular from offensive remarks. Once again, simplicity, peacefulness and exactness of the demonstration are decisive factors for achieving maximum effectiveness.
We want to give you some final obvious information. Please obey all police officers and their directions. Only make the chain from crosswalk to crosswalk, allowing pedestrians to cross. Make sure to allow people getting out of their vehicles to walk thru the chain, instead of around it.
We ask you to regularly check the existent information about the demonstration on our website thewaringeorgia.com under the heading Planned Events, where you will find exact lists and more detailed instructions.
We thank you in advance for the engagement and support.
Conflict Photo Diary
August 21, 2008
Source: The Washington Post, August 2008
Eyewitness: Prague Spring Crushed
August 21, 2008
Ondrej Neff was a 23-year-old journalist at Czechoslovak Radio at the time of the Soviet-led invasion of his country on 21 August 1968.
Ondrej Neff in 1966 (left) and today
Ondrej Neff lost his prominent radio job after the invasion
Czechs and Slovaks are marking the 40th anniversary of the invasion, when 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, marched in to crush Alexander Dubcek’s liberal reforms, known as the Prague Spring.
Here Mr Neff describes how he helped broadcast news of the invasion. Today he is a freelance journalist, blogger and science fiction writer living in Prague.
I was very young at the time, and I’d only been working for Czechoslovak Radio for two years. The foreign desk was the elite of the radio station, and I was the youngest person there.
I lived quite near the station, about 10 minutes’ walk, so I was one of the first people to arrive. It was shortly after 0200. I’d been woken up by the sound of the aircraft overhead: Antonovs carrying troops. It was a very scary sight - this dark night, and all these planes without lights, like huge dark crosses flying over our heads.
When I got to work there were already about 10 or 15 people there; some of them had been on the night shift of course. We were helpless, because the minister of telecommunications had switched off the radio and television transmitters, but the technicians managed to find a way of broadcasting via the telephone lines.
I can remember the sense of desperation I felt in those early days of the occupation. I felt my future had been lost. But of course hope dies last, and we thought that somehow our political leaders - some of whom had been kidnapped and taken to Moscow - would be able to get through to the Russians.
But none of us really had any illusions. Dubcek wasn’t strong enough as a person to fight against Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who was a dictator in the style of Stalin.
Makeshift studio
I remember very well the face of the first Russian soldier I saw. He was carrying a huge machine gun, and looked like he’d just stepped out of a film about the battle of Stalingrad. He was very dirty, and his face was full of sweat. It was absolutely ridiculous, absolutely absurd.
I tried to talk to him, but it was pointless, he wouldn’t speak to me. Even later on, when I did manage to speak to some of the soldiers, it was useless. They were totally indoctrinated. They believed they had prevented the outbreak of World War III or something.
We managed to carry on broadcasting from the headquarters of Czechoslovak radio on Vinohradska Street for a while, then we had to move to a military broadcasting studio about 2km away. We broadcast from there for about 24 hours, before the Russians came and chased us out.
Finally we ended up in a very strange place - a secret studio used by the Italian Communists, who had a subversive radio station here in the 1960s. Practically nobody knew about it - they claimed their broadcasts came from a secret location inside Italy, but they were really put together here in Prague.
The studio had been damaged by fire a few months earlier, and our technicians had been called in to repair the wiring, so they knew about it of course. Our technicians led us to this building and we broadcast from there until mid-September, when things calmed down and we were able to return to the main building.
I left Czechoslovak radio shortly afterwards to do my military service, but by the time I got out of the army, in September 1970, it was all over. All the people in the radio had changed. Obviously I’d been fired from my job in the foreign section.
I ended up going back to college and trained to be a film projector, and got a job in a cinema. Later I became a photographer, and did that for 10 years. In the 1980s, when the situation relaxed a bit, I started publishing science fiction stories.
After the revolution, in the early 1990s, I went back to where I had left off in the 1960s! It was rather ridiculous - I was 45, and I was learning how to be a professional journalist again, after a gap of 20 years.
Of course August 1968 was an important chapter in my life, as it was in the life of practically everybody in my generation, because it changed the lives of all of us - some for the better, some for the worst. Nothing was the same again.
Visual memories and emotional memories are one thing, but political reflections are another. I think the future will judge the importance of this event, because personally I believe that in August 1968, communism as a political and ideological movement lost its moral face.
Source: The BBC, August 2008
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7572276.stm
Georgia Wins Third Olympic Gold
August 21, 2008
Georgia gained its third Olympic gold medal on August 21 after Revazi Mindorashvili defeated Tajikistan’s Yusup Abdusalomov in men’s freestyle 84kg wrestling.
Mindorashvili advanced into the final after defeating Russia’s Georgi Ketoev in semi-final earlier on August 21.
Also on August 21, Giorgi Gogshelidze won bronze medal in men’s freestyle 96kg wrestling.
Georgia now has three Olympic gold medals and three bronze medals.
Manuchar Kirkvelia gave Georgia its first golden medal in the Beijing Olympic Games in the men’s 74 kg Greco-Roman wrestling; followed by Irakli Tsirekidze in men’s 90kg Judo.
Nino Salukvadze took bronze for Georgia in the women’s 10m air pistol and Otar Tushishvili clinched a bronze in the men’s freestyle 66 kg wrestling.
Source: Civil.Ge Online Magazine, August 2008
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=19236
In Battered Villages, Georgians Speak, if They Dare
August 19, 2008
The young Georgian woman stood behind the entrance of a darkened home. Only her dark brown eyes were visible, peering from a mail slot at strangers walking toward the door.
A Georgian man near a burned-out building in Karaleti on Monday. Rocket and artillery fire struck villages near Gori before residents faced a wave of retaliation and opportunistic crime.
“Peaceful people!” she cried in relief, and swung the door inward, revealing two families standing in the shadows of their looted home. They had little food. Their house had been ransacked.
For more than a week, the villages on the roads running south from Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, some 20 miles to Gori, a central Georgian city now under Russian occupation, have been a corridor of grief, violence and crime.
The roads cross from the mountainous Ossetian enclave to territory that Georgia had controlled since the war between the two sides settled into a cease-fire in the 1990s.
Their asphalt lanes serve as paths through a patchwork of villages reflecting central Georgia’s ethnic mix: Many villages were Georgian, many were Ossetian, and many were mixed, a blurry human boundary along a long-standing military front.
But as the Russian armored columns drove south in early August, smashing the Georgian military from their path as they burst out of the enclave and seized Georgia’s main highway, parts of this patchwork were swiftly and violently rearranged.
First, civilians were subject to rocket and artillery barrages. Then, once the Georgian military retreated so swiftly that it abandoned its dead, the Georgian civilians in and near South Ossetia faced a wave of retaliation and opportunistic crime.
Since a cease-fire between Russia and Georgia began last week, the area has remained closed.
It is a military zone sealed off by Russian military checkpoints, a land broken by roaming bands of looters that operated behind the Russian Army and made eerily empty by depopulation caused by flight. The Kremlin has allowed only official tours for journalists, accompanied by government minders, of the region, which Georgia has claimed endured organized intimidation and ethnic cleansing.
The tens of thousands of refugees who staggered out to Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, took with them accounts of mass looting, of arson and, on what thus far seems a smaller scale, of killing on ethnic lines.
The Ossetians, in their capital, have claimed in turn to have been subject to Georgian efforts at ethnic cleansing, and accused President Mikheil Saakashvili of war crimes. But the war on the ground, after setbacks the first day, surged in their favor with Russian help, and Ossetian civilians flowed southward into Georgia proper, as Georgians fled.
On Monday, three journalists from The New York Times gained unaccompanied access to four of these villages — Akhaldaba, Variani, Shindisi and Karaleti — providing an unfiltered, though limited, view of the ill fortune and punishments endured by the civilian Georgian population caught in the war.
The villages are in the southern part of the area where Georgia claims ethnic cleansing occurred and do not include any of the villages from which the most severe and chilling allegations have come. They also constitute a small area of the entire territory.
But the scenes suggested that ethnic anger and a sustained, often unchecked period of looting reached nearly to the boundary of Gori, the city astride the highway that has been under a Russian-enforced martial law.
Only in Akhaldaba, just outside Gori, where food was running short Monday because the village was still cut off, did the residents say that they had not faced privations beyond the initial barrages of artillery or rocket fire.
In Variani, further up the road, the scene was bleaker. The Rev. Tadeoz Kebadze, the priest at a small Georgian Orthodox church, said that after the rocket attacks had come rounds of what he called “lawless marauders.” More than 1,200 of the village’s roughly 1,500 people had fled, he said.
In Shindisi, the families gathered for a bus carrying sacks of rice and flour said they were too afraid to speak. One old man had a badly beaten face. When asked what had happened, another man answered in his place: “Nothing happened to him.”
About 90 percent of the town’s residents had fled, a village elder said. The fear was palpable in those who remained. Many people trembled; their bloodshot eyes looked as if they had been crying for days. Out of earshot, a few men pulled a reporter aside.
“They stole everything,” one said, of the looters.
He placed the blame on Ossetian looters and not Russian Army soldiers. During the day, three families said that the looters had appeared afraid of the Russian troops and had not often operated around them, although journalists in the past 10 days have seen looters intermingled at times with Russian units.
Almost all the people interviewed asked that their names be withheld, out of fear of reprisal while they lived in the lawless zone. Three were so reflexively jumpy by the experiences of the past week that they dashed into the remains of a store at the sound of an approaching car.
The events the residents described underscored how hard it is to assess the scope and scale of the violence and crime, and eventually to assign precise blame. There is no clear estimate yet either of the number of dead and injured or of the number of refugees.
Some Georgian residents said they had been robbed in repeated cycles of home invasion: Three or four armed men would show up with a truck or car, rush through the house and cart off whatever they desired, and then go away. Later, another car would arrive with a different gang.
This went on for days, and apparently was committed by a legion of criminals. But assessing the origins of each individual offense was difficult. Victims spoke of looters from Ossetia, Russia, and, in one case, Chechnya.
Complicating matters, two men said that looting had been conducted by their neighbors. And while some families said Russian troops had helped restrain the looting, on the approaches to Karaleti three Times journalists saw a Russian ambulance crew trying to pack the ambulance with items being yanked from a house.
Many residents also said that the looting had subsided in the past two days. It was an open question whether this indicated that security had improved or simply that there was little left to steal.
Not a single parked car was visible here in Karaleti, except those ruined by collisions or gunfire. In Variani, one aging car sputtered through the square in front of the church, and residents said the only other car in the village escaped being stolen because it was out of gas. In two other villages, no cars were seen. Two families said they knew of no one in town who still had a television; all had been stolen.
Georgian refugees said the destruction grew worse northward along the road. But already in Karaleti, there were signs that armed men had set houses and buildings on fire, although such depredations were less widespread than what refugees have described in villages nearer to the Russian border.
Dzhumbert Parkashvili described a much darker event. His brother, he said, had been kidnapped by a group of men. He had been standing outside during a lull in the looting when a gang of armed men seized them all.
“We don’t know who took them,” he said. “Several of them spoke Russian, several of them spoke Ossetian.”
Mr. Parkashvili fell silent and then began to shudder and weep. “It was five days ago, and no one knows anything about where they took him.”
Source: The New York Times, August 2008
www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/world/europe/19villages.html?pagewanted=1
Save the Children Assists Displaced Children and Families Fleeing Georgia Conflict
August 18, 2008
The Statement of Save the Children
Agency Urges Open Access to Worst-Affected Conflict Areas for Relief Efforts
Westport, Conn. (August 17, 2008) — More than a week after an ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia escalated, displacing thousands of children and families from their homes and villages, Save the Children’s life-saving relief efforts continue.
The global humanitarian organization is deeply concerned for the needs of children and families in areas most affected by the conflict, which are still inaccessible to humanitarian organizations due to insecure conditions.
“Families are sheltering at kindergartens and children’s summer camps, where living conditions are extremely poor. There is no electricity, water, beds or food,” said Tom Vincent, Save the Children’s Country Director in Georgia. “Under these conditions, children are highly vulnerable. Save the Children is moving quickly to meet their critical needs as the numbers of displaced continue to rise.”
Close to 23,000 displaced people have registered with the Georgian government as of yesterday, while the United Nations estimates that more than 118,000 people have been forced to flee their homes because of the conflict. Save the Children is working with the Georgian Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation and other international non-governmental organizations to monitor and respond to the needs of those in centers and those who have newly arrived.
Providing Food and Medical Supplies
“Right now, our primary focus is on delivering life-saving relief,” added Vincent. “Displaced families are telling us they urgently need food, basic hygiene products and cooking utensils.”
To date, Save the Children has provided food packages of biscuits, rice, canned meats and fish, pasta and other items, for a 10-day period to over 1,200 people, including more than 300 children, in Lagodekhi, Rustavi,Sagarejo and Tbilisi. The agency is initially preparing to provide aid to 3,500 families affected by the crisis at 12 displaced person sites in Bolnisi, Borjomi, Gardabani, Lagodekhi, Rustavi and Sagarejo. In the past week, Save the Children also has procured and distributed medical supplies to hospitals and other medical institutions.
The agency is buying materials for and pre-positioning hygiene, basic health and household kits that will include items like soap, toothpaste, flashlights, blankets and cooking utensils. Save the Children expects to broaden its humanitarian response in the next few days after completing assessments to determine where families are and what they need most. The relief organization is working with local partners and volunteers to assemble and distribute relief items.
Open Access to Worst-Affected Areas for Relief Efforts
While Save the Children has reached more than a thousand displaced people, the needs of children and families in the worst-affected areas, including Gori and Tskhinvali, remain largely unknown. Humanitarian access to these conflict-affected areas has been limited due to insecure conditions.
An agreement on the cessation of violence brokered last week and recently signed by both Georgia and Russia, includes a provision that would allow humanitarian organizations open access for relief efforts.
“Due to security, there are entire communities in the worst-affected areas cut off from humanitarian aid,” said Vincent. “It is critical that humanitarian organizations gain safe and unrestricted access to these areas so that we can assess and respond to the needs of children and their families.”
Vincent added, “We urge the international community to ensure that the humanitarian corridors remain open so that aid can get through to children in the areas hardest hit by this crisis.”
Background
Save the Children is coordinating its response with other relief agencies by providing child-focused expertise in emergency food relief, shelter, non-food relief, children’s protection and their health and nutrition.
Save the Children has worked in Georgia since 1993, implementing health, education and livelihood programs among the most vulnerable populations, including street children and displaced families. All of the agency’s offices, with the exception of Abkhazia, are open and operating.
Source: Civil.Ge Online Magazine, August 2008