Last year when I walked through the urban centre of Tbilisi I was struck by the vibrancy of its people. It’s a rare feeling, an energy that permeates through all senses. This was a month before the war broke out. It was hard to believe that refugees would soon be flooding this cultural oasis – again.
The main avenue, Rustaveli, was under going a face lift. Sidewalks were being repaired, walls painted, and luxury hotels built.
But when one wanders off the main path another altogether different image begins to emerge.
Before heading off to Abkhazia I interviewed Prime Minister Vladimer Lado Gurgenidze (now former). He struck me as an arrogant and an extremely intelligent individual.
He refused to comment about his belligerent president. There will be no war he said. And when I ask him to comment on Georgia’s human rights record he flat out refused. You can listen to an excerpt of that here. His message was that Georgia’s economy was strong; a narrative that I could not accept and later turned out to be false.
When I returned to Tbilisi from Abkhazia I met an individual from Georgia’s Human Rights Centre. This individual who prefers to rename anonymous feared for his life. “We are struggling for a real democracy,” he said.
The next day I left Georgia, worried about a people under an administration that was squeezing out civil society and opposition. Since then I have maintained contact with civil society inside Georgia. Every once in awhile I’ll receive an email detailing the fear, the intimidation, and the beatings by Georgian police.
On May 5th, a Georgian former diplomat, Vakhtang Maisaia, was arrested by the Counterintelligence Department of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs. He is being charged with espionage for having passed sensitive information to Russian agents. That is the official spin.
I have no evidence to offer the contrary except the word of a human rights activist and journalist inside Georgia who says Maisiai is innocent. Obviously there is a conflict here. But in Georgia, truth comes at a terrible cost.
Today, the west is beginning to notice another side of this tiny country as it too, wonders off the main path, and beyond the fading veneer of Saakashvili’s ‘democracy.’
