[GEORGIA] [REFUGEES] [ABKHAZIA] - In 2007 we first visited a refugee centre in Tbilisi, where we interviewed Georgians who had fled from Abkhazia during the war in 1992-1993. An estimated 250,000 Georgian refugees have since been living in 'temporary' accommodation, such as former student apartments, old primary schools and abandoned hotels. Every Georgian president has promised the refugees that he would end the frozen conflict and that the refugees would soon be able to return to their...
more »[GEORGIA] [REFUGEES] [ABKHAZIA] - In 2007 we first visited a refugee centre in Tbilisi, where we interviewed Georgians who had fled from Abkhazia during the war in 1992-1993. An estimated 250,000 Georgian refugees have since been living in 'temporary' accommodation, such as former student apartments, old primary schools and abandoned hotels. Every Georgian president has promised the refugees that he would end the frozen conflict and that the refugees would soon be able to return to their homeland Abkhazia.
When we visited these refugees in 2007 in a totally rundown former student apartment in Tbilisi, they had already spent 14 years in their 'temporary' accommodation. But we could still detect a faint glimmer of hope among the refugees we spoke to. The Georgian President Saakashvili would make sure that they would eventually be able to go back to their beloved homeland, they told us.
After the most recent conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008, any chance of the refugees returning to Abkhazia has evaporated.
In 2010 we again visited the refugees from Abkhazia in different cities across Georgia. All hope was gone. The government had begun to offer the refugees permanent housing. In many cases the refugees refused it, because they didn't know what to do with a decrepit old room in a rundown student apartment.
We saw sporadically that refugees had been placed in smart-looking, new-build apartments. This was usually when the government organised a tour of the refugee housing especially for us.
In 2010 we visited many of the refugees we had met in 2007. It was distressing to see that the situation had not improved for any of them. The 84-year-old Ekaterina Dwaladze (photo 6), who during our previous visit had told us that her only wish was to return to Abkhazia before she died, had passed away. Her neighbours had found her in her room a few weeks earlier.
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