Photo: Dato Parulava/OC Media.
Residents of two villages in southern Georgia are suing the government for transferring land they have used for decades to the Georgian Orthodox Church. They claim the lands are vital for them to sustain their families, but local church officials — who plan to build a monastery in the predominantly Muslim area — don’t share their concerns. [Read more…]
Dr. Thomas Risse and Dr. Tanja Börzel. Photo: GIP
Dr. Tanja Börzel and Dr. Thomas Risse of the Otto-Suhr-Institute for Political Science discuss the challenges and opportunities for Georgia’s EU aspirations. [Read more…]
Marina Alanakyan (Dato Parulava /OC Media)
Vitali Safarov, a 25-year-old Jewish Georgian man, was stabbed to death in Tbilisi in September 2018. Two men were jailed for 15 years each on charges of group murder, however, the court ruled his killing was not ethnically motivated despite witness testimony that he was killed by neo-Nazis because he was Jewish.
Georgian Manganese’s enrichment plant in Chiatura. (Mari Nikuradze / OC Media)
After starting a sudden and unsanctioned strike earlier this month, miners in Chiatura stitched their lips together to demonstrate how much their hazardous occupations cost. [Read more…]
Vitali Safarov (Facebook)
The key witness in the trial over the murder of Vitali Safarov in Tbilisi has testified that Safarov was killed because he was Jewish. [Read more…]
Georgian women marched against sexual violence and labour exploitation. (Tamuna Chkareuli / OC Media)
On 8 March, International Women's Day, dozens of Georgian women took to the streets of Tbilisi to protest against sexual violence and to demand proper labour conditions for women.
Vake Park (Dato Parulava / OC Media)
Green activists and their supporters gathered in Vake Park in Tbilisi on 27 January to celebrate the end of an almost six-year battle to halt construction of a hotel in the park. [Read more…]
Salome Zurabishvili
Salome Zurabishvili has been elected the 5th president of Georgia in 28 November’s presidential runoff, winning 60% of votes according to preliminary results. Her win is historic, given that she is the first woman to run and succeed in the marathon for the presidential seat. Constantly emphasising her European origins, she has promised to help Georgia integrate into NATO and the EU and as she likes to say, ‘bring Georgian society together’.
The European Parliament (Dato Parulava /OC Media)
The European Parliament has expressed concerns over high-level corruption, human rights protection, labour safety, judicial independence, and more in Georgia in a report on the implementation of the country’s EU Association Agreement. Despite criticisms, the report’s summary said overall assessment of the implementation process was positive. [Read more…]
Guram Kashia against the backdrop of anti-queer protesters (Background photo: Giorgi Gogua /Liberali. Front photo: Reuters)
Dato Parulava is a staff writer at OC Media and Liberali.
In the face of abuse and threats over wearing a rainbow armband at a match, Georgia’s football captain, Guram Kashia, has received an unprecedented outpouring of support. Regardless of how much this support means for the queer community, we need to ask whether it is really for them, given that Kashia’s most prominent supporters have avoided mentioning queer people entirely. [Read more…]
