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OC Media

Voices of Georgian emigrants — ‘They treated us like dogs’

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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…]

Voice from the Georgian–South Ossetian conflict | ‘There is no alternative to peace’

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M M, 47 years old, the village of Dvani, Kareli municipality

‘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.’

[Read more…]

Voice from Dedoplistskaro | ‘I dreamed of seeing a child protection hotline and calling it’

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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…]

16–18 May 2013: the days of human tragedies

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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…]

Voice from the Georgian–South Ossetian conflict | ‘What has always been and will always be is the hatred towards armed people on the other side’

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A D, 34 years old, Tskhinval

‘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.’

[Read more…]

Voice from Guria | ‘The prices for medicines are insane; isn’t this repression?’

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Rusudan Chelidze (Nino Baidauri / Women of Georgia)

Rusudan Chelidze, 80, Zemo Bakhvi, Guria

 ‘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…]

‘Happy is he who is happy at home’ — a Syrian shoemaker in Nagorno-Karabakh

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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…]

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