Samtskhe-Javakheti

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Aspara farmlands under snow. Photo: Mzisa Khmaladze/OC Media.

Feature Stories

The disappearing villages of Samtskhe-Javakheti

by Mzisa Khmaladze

•5 min read

In Georgia’s southern Samtskhe-Javakheti region, many once populous villages are facing rapid abandonment, with their former inhabitants driven to leave by harsh environmental conditions and government neglect. For many years, one family remained resilient in the village of Aspara, nestled on the western shores of Lake Paravani, Georgia’s largest lake. Long after their neighbours had left, the Ispiryans stayed firm in one of 20 houses that remained standing in the village, with the ruins of 6

Portraits of soldiers killed in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh in a churchyard in Akhalkalaki. Photo: Amaliya Babayan/OC Media.

2020 Georgian Parliamentary Elections

In Georgia’s Samtskhe-Javakheti, war and coronavirus have overshadowed the election

by Amaliya Babayan

•4 min read

The election campaign in Georgia’s Samtskhe-Javakheti Region has been practically on hold since late September, with the war in Nagorno-Karabakh and a new outbreak of coronavirus in the region preoccupying the public’s attention. On 27 September, war broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh. From that day on, large-scale election campaigns came to an end in Samtskhe-Javakheti. People in this southern Georgian region, which has a significant ethnic-Armenian population, have been glued to their screens r

Armenia

Armenian journalists denied entry into Georgia

by OC Media

•4 min read

The Georgian Border Police has denied entry to three Armenian journalists travelling to Georgia to study the influence of Russian propaganda in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region. Yuri Manvelyan, Tigran Khachatryan, and Tigran Hakobyan from independent news agency Epress were turned away from the Bavra-Ninotsminda checkpoint on 11 October. The journalists were going to Akhalkalaki to work on a joint project with their colleagues from Tbilisi-based news agency NewCaucasus. The project is financ

Feature Stories

Video — The story of Mokhe told in the snow

by Volodymyr Soboliev

•4 min read

After a dispute broke out between Christians and Muslims over the ruins of an old building in Mokhe, a village in Adigeni Municipality, the government created a commission to determine the building’s historical belonging. After two years of work, the commission decided not to grant ownership of the ruins to either side. Instead, it declared them a cultural heritage site, named ‘Disputed Building’. Many of the local Muslims had shown distrust towards the commission from the very beginning

Catholicism

Catholic icons and prayer books burned in southern Georgia prayer house

by Volodymyr Soboliev

•3 min read

Catholic icons and prayer books have been burned at a small Orthodox prayer house in the village of Vale, in southern Georgia’s Samktskhe-Javakheti Region. Catholic and Orthodox parishioners have been praying together at the prayer house for years. The incident occurred on Monday at around 18:00. Icons and books next to the prayer wall and inside the prayer house were destroyed. ‘I was walking home with my child when I saw the fire. We discovered that Catholic icons and books were burning

Abkhazia

Everything was over when the war began

by Volodymyr Soboliev

•8 min read

Some people’s hearts start to ache when they suddenly come across a photo album or an old video tape lying in dust in the corner of a cupboard. For a refugee from Abkhazia, the trigger is the word ‘war’. ‘He came to his father, only a few days late’ Arshak Davidyan will never see Abkhazia again. The eighty-year-old refugee from the village of Tamysh, in the Ochamchira District, died last winter, alone, in a small room in one of the abandoned buildings of a former college, where he had

adigeni

Voice from Meskheti | ‘Whether in rain or thunderstorms, we pray outside’

by Dato Parulava

•4 min read

After a dispute broke out between Christians and Muslims over the ruins of a building in the village of Mokhe, in southwest Georgia’s Adigeni Municipality, the government stepped in to resolve the situation by pledging to build a new mosque. The building in question, which Muslims in the village claim is a mosque but Christians believe was constructed on the ruins of a church, has been officially declared a ‘disputed building’. The Mokhe Commission, which was created to determine