In 2021, Vera Kupatadze was one of eight people who spent a month on hunger strike, her lips sewn shut, to demand compensation from Georgian Manganese for damage to her property.
Today, Vera is one of dozens of Shukrutians who are demanding action and clarity from the company, which operates the mines in Chiatura, on the fate of their houses and the entire village.
Vera Kupatadze in the protest tent outside the Korokhnali Mine, which protesters blocked a month ago. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
During the 2021 protests, Vera was blackmailed with intimate recordings of a relative; an unknown caller threatened to release them if she did not end her protest.
But she continued her hunger strike until the protest’s end, when the families signed individual agreements with Georgian Manganese to be compensated. The agreements stated that the company would pay the damages of their homes as determined by the Samkharauli Forensic Bureau of Expertise.
But Vera says that since then, she has not accepted ‘a single lari’ from the company.
‘I could not touch the money they were offering, I couldn’t. This is all we own and what they were offering was the final amount’, she tells OC Media.
She says that state property evaluators who were meant to evaluate her property never turned up, and the company instead offered them a paltry amount of money based on their own evaluations. She adds that if there were any new damage to the property or if their home collapsed enirely, they would not receive any additional compensation.
‘I am scared at night. I swear, sometimes I wake up at night and my heart is shaking [from the fear] that my house may collapse this second,’ she says. She adds that her nephew, who works in a mine in Chiatura, tells her that in five years her house will probably not exist anymore.
‘These kids work inside those mines. He tells me not to sign anything that will promise something within five years, he says it’ll all be gone, and this house will be gone too.’
Vera says her family has no other place to live.
Vera Kupatadze in her yard. A building in her yard recently collapsed. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
Shukruti lies next to the village of Itkhvisi, where around 20 houses collapsed on the same day in 2022. Itkhvisi is visible from Shukruti, and some of the people OC Media spoke to shared the fear that the same might happen to their village very soon.
Around a dozen houses have collapsed in Shukruti in recent years, but tens of families still remain in the village.
Deep cracks in Shukruti village. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
A bus stop, which was built a few months ago, was recently taken down. Locals say it was deemed unsafe. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
It’s been a month since Shukrutians resumed their protest. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
Ia Neparidze told OC Media that her house was built in 1993. About five years ago, cracks started to appear.
A veteran journalist with over a decade of experience, Mariam is passionate about gender equality and workers’ rights. Though often managing from behind a desk, her instinct to report from the ground kicks in whenever news breaks.
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