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Nine years of pressure

•3 min read

‘Shirin and the girls were detained’ was a phrase first whispered in 2015 while Meydan TV staff were being trained in Ukraine. I was working with them at the time. The news shocked everyone, and as I remember one of my colleagues arguing with everyone after hearing this news while we were in the office of the Ukraine media outlet Nashi Qroshi. This month, a similar refrain was uttered when Meydan TV journalist Aysel Umudova sent a voice message on Telegram saying ‘Aytaj, Khayala, Aynur, Natig

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Cutting the aid of those in need

by Arshaluys Barseghyan

•2 min read

Last week brought bad news for Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. For a little over a year, the 100,000 refugees who lost their homes have been relying on government aid to cover rent and utilities in Armenia. Rental prices, which skyrocketed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have left Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians with little choice but to pay increased rents, especially in and around Yerevan, where they prefer to stay for work, education, and other opportunities. The aid is modest — just ֏50,00

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How police violated my rights as a journalist

by Mariam Nikuradze

•2 min read

On Tuesday, police dispersed an opposition-organised protest outside Tbilisi State University. It was the second night protesters were blocking Ilia Chavchavadze, Melikishvili, and Varaziskhevi streets, a major crossroads. Police didn’t issue a warning about the dispersal in advance; they only gave a verbal warning to protest organisers on the site 15 minutes in advance. The dispersal started at around 7:00 in the morning. Thousands of police officers started moving to clear the intersection

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Climate change conference or authoritarian circus?

by Aytan Farhadova

•2 min read

Last week, as COP29 descended on Baku, I came across a video posted by economist Toghrul Mashalli on his Facebook account. In the video, he was talking about how he saw a foreigner walking on the streets of Baku in the evening. He overheard the foreigner filming a video of the street for his friend. ‘I love Baku. Look at this beautiful street. A wonderful city: no crowds, few cars, quiet’, the foreigner was telling his friend. Mashalli said that he wanted to go up to the man and tell him tha

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From Georgia to Georgia, authoritarianism spreads

by Nate Ostiller

•4 min read

As the two Americans on the OC Media staff, Nate and Xandie have been closely watching the US election with an eye for what it will mean at home and in the South Caucasus. Yesterday, we unfortunately watched the US elect Donald Trump in a win for authoritarianism and populism. Just as the US state of Georgia embraced conservatism and a leader with seemingly little interest in democratic values, so did the country of Georgia just a couple of weeks ago, with the ruling Georgian Dream party clai

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Last call to save Georgia’s democracy

by Salome Khvedelidze

•3 min read

On the morning of 27th of October Tbilisi was unusually quiet. The results of the 2024 parliamentary elections had brought the city to a virtual standstill (even the ruling Georgian Dream and its supporters did little to celebrate their apparent victory). The night before, Georgian Dream crossed yet another line, having falsified these historic elections. How did we get here, and where do we go from here? Back in spring, during the foreign agent law protests, the Georgian society — civil

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Will Biden encourage a peace treaty with his letters?

by Arshaluys Barseghyan

•2 min read

This week, outgoing US President Joe Biden sent two letters to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, both hand-delivered by his Special Assistant Michael Carpenter. The similar letters, each consisting of four paragraphs, conveyed a single message — Biden’s encouragement for the two countries to ‘finalise an agreement this year’. Biden assigned Carpenter to brief the two leaders on ‘some of the steps’ the US wants to take toward cementing a peace tre