M K, 37 years old, Tskhinval
‘My Soviet childhood was very happy. I thought that my whole life would be like a fairy tale. But the fairy tale ended abruptly.’
‘My Soviet childhood was very happy. I thought that my whole life would be like a fairy tale. But the fairy tale ended abruptly.’
(Gayane Mkrtchyan /OC Media)
Thirty years have passed since the day an earthquake devastated northern Armenia, killing 25,000 people. The town of Spitak, close to the epicentre, was utterly destroyed, and for many of the survivors, life remains a struggle 30 years on. [Read more…]
by On.ge
Since the 1990s, thousands of Georgians have left home in search of opportunities abroad, pushed out by food poverty, debts, unemployment, or to escape violence in the family. Below are stories from three women who braved landmines, hidden containers, and frozen seas in search for a better future in Greece. [Read more…]
by Daptar
Makhachkala (Dominik K. Cagara /OC Media)
A 35-year-old woman from Makhachkala tells Daptar that becoming a second wife is a dream come true. [Read more…]
‘The cost of conflict is enormous. Everyone paid that cost. I personally paid with my damaged psychology. The most precious part of what I had — the best period of my life — my young age was claimed by this conflict. This is going to haunt me all my life.’
Sopio Jeterishvili (Salome Sagharadze /Women of Georgia)
‘I think that if a person really wants to do something, if it’s in their soul, they can do it. I’ve wanted to be independent since I was a child. I made several attempts at it. I escaped from home a few times. I don’t know why but since very early childhood, when I was so little, I already knew I didn’t want to live in that house, where they don’t love you and you don’t love them.’ [Read more…]
Giorgi Kikonishvili is a blogger and member of the Equality Movement
On 17 May 2013, International Day Against Homophobia, a small group of around 50 queer rights activists were confronted in Tbilisi by thousands of counter-demonstrators led by Georgian Orthodox priests. Demonstrators carried posters with homophobic messages such as: ‘We don’t need Sodom and Gomorrah in Georgia’. The crowds, some carrying nettles to beat queer rights activists with, broke through police lines to attack the activists. Police were forced to evacuate the small number of activists from the city centre. Below is the story of Giorgi Kikonishvili, one of those present. [Read more…]
‘It was in November 1989. I was seven. I remember it was a gloomy day. The whole town was alert. I was little and could not understand anything. What I would hear was that some Georgians came shooting. And then everything started spinning: a blockade began, we would hear that they burnt a village and then another, kidnapped some people and shot some others. Barricades started popping in the town and cross-shootings followed.’
Rusudan Chelidze (Nino Baidauri / Women of Georgia)
‘You cannot really call what we went through back then childhood. There were only two of us. We had no one else out there in the whole world.’ [Read more…]
Nerses’s main clients are teachers and students of Artsakh State University, who order shoes to be modeled on designs found online (Anahit Danielyan /OC Media)
Stories written about Armenians from the diaspora who moved to Nagorno-Karabakh are, as a rule, positive: about successful businesses or achievements in agriculture. But among those who moved to Nagorno-Karabakh there are many who struggle to make ends meet; the Demirchyans, are such a family. They decided not to run away from problems, but to stay in Nagorno-Karabakh. [Read more…]