Achabeti

Interview place, time and date:15.08.2008, Kindergarden #17
Interviewer organization: Association of Directors of Schools of Georgia
Respodent:woman,56 years
Story kode:0018
The reason why I am a refugee now is the invasion of Russian armed forces into my village. They were accompanied by Ossetian separatists who were breaking into our homes, stealing everything and burning our houses down. Russian tanks were all around the village with Ossetian people being happy because of that. That's why we left the village and walked for 3 days and 3 nights through the marshland and yards. When we got out of the marshland we encountered Ossetians, who were hiding in some kind of a blind alley. There were 12 of us standing in front of Ossetians. They offended old people – pointed at us with the guns and cursed at us in Ossetian as well as Georgian languages. They took one young man aside and beat him to death, then confiscated his cell phone, which he took the pictures of our trip with. His name was Dato Mindiashvili. He was returned to us after hours of begging and crying. He was ina terrible condition. Afterwards, we continued our way through the mud, bushes and yards until we got to the village called Sveneti. At this point we saw Russian tanks, huge vehicles with artillery machines attached to them. They stopped us as well and started throwing shoes at us and pointing guns. They were crying in Russian, yelling at us. Finally they let us go and we got to Tbilisi.
I left my husband on an occupied territory, he is in Achabeti. He was not able to get out of there because of Russians and Ossetians. His whereabouts are still unknown.