Caucasus: Feb ‘09

A group of journalists from regions all over Georgia paid a rare visit to villages hit hardest by last year’s conflict, learning at first hand the problems facing refugees from the area.



The group of about 20 visited the Shida Kartli region from February 4-6, studying the situation that had evolved there since the 2008 August war.



The IWPR mission resulted in some 40 newspaper articles, television and radio reports.



On the ground, it prompted local authorities to address concrete complaints voiced by refugees about living standards in their improvised settlements. The reporters themselves said it had closed a valuable information gap.



The journalists, from eight regions in Georgia, including Tbilisi, also visited villages adjacent to Tskhinvali, an area that six months on from the war is still shunned by most journalists.



It has yet to be repopulated by people who fled during the hostilities and now live elsewhere as refugees.



Maia Avaliani, from Tbilisi, described the visit as challenging. “I felt afraid when our driver said he wouldn’t drive us to the village of Ergneti, near the ‘new’ border with South Ossetia, as he stopped the car at some distance away,” she said.



“Tskhinvali was plainly visible from the Georgian checkpoint located on the de facto border between Georgia and South Ossetia,” said Zaur Dargali, an ethnic Azeri from the Kvemo region.



“You could see yards surrounded with red tape, which means they have yet to be cleared of mines, the burnt wreckage of houses and schools and medical stations lying in ruins. I will remember these pictures as long as I live.



“Thanks to the IWPR project, for the first time I had a chance to see the aftermath of the war with my own eyes.



“A lot has been written and said about this war, but the heart-rending panorama that revealed it before us was far more than we had expected to see.”



As part of the mission, the journalists also inspected the new settlements that the government has built for refugees.



“We talked to refugees from South Ossetia who had lost everything,” said Tamuna Uchidze, a reporter from the Samtskhe-Javakheti region.



“In the new cottages, they have been provided with all the basic amenities but… there is an acute shortage of food, medicines and information.”



The reporters then met Lado Vardzelashvili, governor of the Shida Kartli region, who explained how the authorities were handling the problems facing refugees in the new settlements.



Varzelashvili described the issue of the refugees as “highly relevant”, though “a good deal of disinformation” was allegedly being spread, “which is why it’s important that IWPR has allowed so many journalists to see everything with their own eyes.



“Now, these journalists know what has really been done, what has been done well or poorly, or what we have been unable to do as yet.”



The governor described the meeting as useful, saying it had helped him acquaint himself further with refugee concerns.



One problem of which the journalists informed him was the desire of many refugees to landscape their settlements so that they looked less forbidding.



Bichiko Lutidze, a refugee from the Tskhinvali region, now living in a settlement just outside Gori, had told reporters that bare fields ringed his settlement.



“In winter, the place is battered by winds, while in summer we are going to suffocate with dust and drought. But the government has refused to allow us to plant greenery here,” he said.



Governor Vardzelashvili responded to this complaint, relayed by the reporters, saying change was already underway.



“Very soon we’ll build fences around each cottage in the settlements. As for landscaping them, I’ve been personally been buying saplings to plant in spring,” he said.



The governor said refugees were already entitled to raise plots and small orchards – the problem was lack of information. “It’s a pity the refugees know nothing about these things, which give rise to unfounded suspicions among them,” he said.



Another positive result of the IWPR reporters’ mission to the conflict zone and the refugee settlements is that the local authorities in the Shida Kartli region replaced the broken glass panes in the hotel Kartli, where refugees from the earlier conflict in South Ossetia in the 1990s still live.



The visit also prompted the authorities to provide more food for two blind refugee pensioners, the Pekhshvelashvili sisters.



One of the sisters, Zhenia, said that before the journalists arrived, they had barely eaten for a long time, “We lived off cabbage and potatoes. Now they even bring us hot dishes.”



Tea Zibzibadze, a journalist from Kutaisi, said the visit had been distressing but essential. “I have never seen so much suffering in one day before,” she said.



“But I believe our visit to the place was very important, as our people have no idea what the real situation is here.”



IWPR had helped to close an information gap, she continued, “Our own media outlets couldn’t have afforded to send us here, and we wouldn’t have dared come on our own.”