There is never a shortage of drama in Georgia, but, until recently, the scandals usually have hit one at a time. Now the country simultaneously faces a hue and cry over the arrest of three prominent photographers on espionage charges and an unprecedented state-vs-church confrontation over changes in the legal status of religious minorities.
In a videotaped statement posted on the Interior Ministry's website, presidential photographer Irakli Gedenidze said that he'd become aware that requests for photos allegedly made by European Pressphoto Agency photographer Zurab Kurtsikidze were connected to "the special services."
“I knew that he was sending these images to Moscow, to a photo agency there," he said. Gedenidze claims he tried to refuse the requests, but was told it would jeopardize his contractual relations with Kurtsikidze.
The videotaped statement, though, did little to dispel widespread distrust and confusion surrounding the photographers’ case.
The tape presented a plan of the presidential residence, a presidential schedule and a document about a presidential meeting, stamped "secret," as among the documents allegedly passed to Kurtsikidze. The Interior Ministry claims that Kurtsikidze was in contact with two Russian military intelligence agents, but does not elaborate.
On Saturday, Gedenidze's wife, Natia, was released without being charged.
Despite growing public demand for an official explanation, Georgia's Interior Ministry officials remain tongue-tied about the reasons for their July 7 arrest of four well-known photographers.
By law, the government needs to present formal charges within 48 hours against the four photographers, who are being held in jail on suspicion of espionage. How much more information may be released when those charges are filed, however, is unknown. The case has been classified as secret; the photographers' lawyers decline to share details about the government's case with media.
Among the detainees are President Mikheil Saakashvili’s own photographer, Irakli Gedenidze, and his wife, also a photographer.
Saakashvili’s spokesperson Manana Manjgaladze on Friday offered a brief glimpse into the case, but clarified little. She said that the accusations are not related to the detainees' work as photographers, but rather are about passing on confidential information, such as documentation and officials’ schedules, on to what she described as a spy network. Gedenidze had access to such information as a pool photographer for the president’s office, she said.
Manjgaladze pointed out that the photographers were not known for their anti-government views and added that “[i]t is troubling that their detention is being linked to media freedom" issues.
But many civil rights activists, journalists and opposition politicians are making that connection. A protest rally of journalists wearing black blindfolds, organized by the opposition-minded media holding Alia, was held on July 8 in front of the Tbilisi police building where the four men are held.
The latest installment in Georgia’s chase for spies on July 7 saw the arrest of four high-profile photographers, including no less than President Mikheil Saakashvili’s personal photographer.
In a nocturnal detention spree, counterintelligence officials detained five photographers on suspicion of sending visual intelligence to an unnamed "foreign country." Detained are: presidential photographer Irakli Gedenidze and his photographer wife Natia Gedenidze; Georgian Foreign Ministry photographer Giorgi Abdaladze; and Zurab Kurtsikidze, a stringer for the European Press Photo Agency.
Also brought in for questioning was Associated Press photo correspondent Shakh Aivazov, but he was later released.
So far, media efforts to extract any piece of information from clammed-up Georgian officials about the reason for the arrests have been in vain. A Ministry of Internal Affairs statement simply has it that the photographers were sending certain things to a certain country's intelligence service, causing certain damage to national interests. Putting all the bits together, it is not difficult to guess that the said country is Russia.
But without any released evidence from police to support their accusations, the photographers' arrest could prove a serious blow to Georgia’s less-than-stellar media freedom record. The police, though, seem to be in no hurry to explain what exactly happened.
On the other hand, if the accusations are proven true, the “Photogate” could prove a big embarrassment for Georgia’s pride-and-joy security and police system.
Even in linguistics and nomenclature, Tbilisi is keen to embrace Western ways, it seems. The Georgian government on June 27 told the world to quit using the Russian name for Georgia, "Gruzia," and to switch to the international, English-language version, "Georgia."
But this could prove an uphill task. In fact, Georgia goes by many names around the world: "Georgia" in English, "Gurjistan" in Turkish, "Gruzia" in Russian, "Vrastan" in Armenian.
There's also the problem of ongoing confusion between Georgia and the southern US state of the same name.
Somehow lost in all this jumble is what Georgians themselves call their country -- "Sakartvelo," meaning, literally, "a place for kartvelians (Georgians)." But that's another story.
Forget the story about American soldiers staring goats to death in Iraq. Russia's state-run Perviy Kanal television station can top that; it claims that the US military is now busy waging bacterial warfare against wild boars in Russia's North Caucasus.
In a documentary opus that aired this week, reporter Anton Vernitskiy alleges that Washington has been setting up labs in Azerbaijan and Georgia to spread death and disease on the home turf of its former Cold War foe. Soon after US-financed disease monitoring labs appeared in Azerbaijan and Georgia, Vernitskiy tells viewers (as a gong sounds in the background), a strange flu started decimating wild boar populations in the region.
Vernitskiy even took the pains to travel to Tbilisi to interview US Ambassador John Bass, who told him that the labs are perfectly harmless.
But this is not all. Citing disgruntled ex-Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili, the documentary argues that former President George W. Bush in 2005 egged on Tbilisi to use force against breakaway South Ossetia -- a suggestion that allegedly led to war with Russia three years later.
In the meantime, Vernitskiy continues, Georgia has also been busy lending financial and logistical support to Islamic militants -- a claim that has nearly become old hat for pro-government Russian news outlets.
Vernitskiy’s saga may not be worth retelling if did not air on Perviy Kanal, the Kremlin's main TV messenger. The documentary may not cause more than eye rolling in Washington, but Russia and Georgia both use media to keep their official animosity alive.
So if bears in Russia suddenly start having asthma attacks, you can be sure Perviy Kanal will know where to look for the culprit.
If you listen to Georgia's and Russia's leaders long enough, you may really start to feel that you should double-check the size of Georgia on a world map. At a two-hour-long banter with reporters on May 18, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev claimed that the 2008 war with Georgia had been about, yes, defending Russia's independence.
“[W]e have managed to protect ourselves, our independence, our sovereign ways,” Medvedev told journalists. “Here, I mean the most challenging events, including the 2008 events,” said Medvedev, who once described the confrontation with Georgia as Russia’s 9/11.
Blowing things out of proportion may be de rigueur in political rhetoric, but implying that Russia’s sovereignty was at stake in the five-day war, which did not even spill onto Russian soil, is a bit much.
Sure, Georgia is home to many larger-than-life characters with grand plans and the 2008 war resonated around the world, but, to hear Medvedev tell it, it sounds as if Russia survived (just barely) a sequel of the 1812 Napoleonic invasion, with Georgian troops on the verge of taking Moscow.
Nonetheless, there appears to be a political moral to this Russian version of "The Little Dutch Boy." As in any good fairy tale, those who heroically sacrifice themselves deserve a reward. In the 2012 presidential elections, the underlying message appears to be, Russians should really vote for one of the two guardians of the nation’s sovereignty -- either Dima (Medvedev) or Vova (Prime Minister Vladimir Putin).
This blog recently reported about Georgian opposition groups' efforts to woo the country's rural wine makers, who are still feeling the effects of Russia's embargo on the country's wine.
Could Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili be striking back and creating his own brand of "wine politics"? More here.
May 9 is a post-Soviet family holiday. And, with that in mind, Russian President Dmitri ("Dima") Medvedev did not forget today to send out greeting cards to the heads of state of all of Russia’s World-War-II-era cousins (minus the black sheep, Georgia) to congratulate them on the 66th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
He also had a few words of advice.
“Our duty is to prevent any attempts to rewrite history and foster in the young generation the sense of patriotism and pride for our common history,” Medvedev wrote to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who was commended for resisting attempts to “reassess the outcome of World War II.”
Azerbaijan indeed celebrated May 9 in a traditional way. But its neighbor and sworn enemy Armenia chose to focus on Armenian soldiers' and Karabakhi separatists' May 8-9, 1991 seizure of the town of Shusha from Azerbaijan in the war over the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh.
Matters went much further afield in Georgia. Just as Medvedev feared, many Georgians are busy reconsidering the May 9 observance.
Staying true to his vow to never-ever-speak-to-Saakashvili-again, the Russian leader passed on his good wishes to the Georgian people, but not to their president. Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze's response was succinct: “There are many ways to be a clown," he observed.
While the killing of Osama bin Laden echoed around the world, the official responses so far from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia are congratulatory, reserved and silent, respectively.
Congratulations predictably came from Georgia, always the region's head cheerleader for Team America. Tbilisi, which contributes troops to the US-led campaign in Afghanistan and is a diehard Washington ally, called the news a shared success for everyone involved in the fight against terrorism. “[W]e believe that terrorism is the biggest problem faced by the world,” Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze stressed. “We hope this success will lead to other successes by the anti-terrorism movement.”
Azerbaijan and Armenia, which, unlike Georgia, try to maintain balance in their diplomatic friendships, were less vocal.
Azerbaijan, where newly arrived US Ambassador Matthew Bryza is busy massaging Washington-Baku ties, focused on the potential security problems to come. As Washington advised its diplomats and citizens to stay alert for possible retaliatory attacks from terrorist groups, Azerbaijani Interior Ministry spokesperson Orkhan Mansurzade underlined that the American and other Western embassies are carefully guarded in Baku. “The areas where these embassies… are located remain in the center of our attention,” Mansurzade said. “Security measures are being taken at a very high level.”
[This post was updated on April 27, 2011 to clarify Georgia's position on Russia's WTO accession.]
A hazardous, bubbling substance was discovered in Moscow markets the other day. Russian food police arrested bottles of the Georgian mineral water Borjomi, which stubbornly appeared on stalls in the Russian capital despite a nationwide ban on beverage imports from Georgia.
Russian food security officials maintain that Georgian wine and mineral water -- the cause and cure of hangovers -- are not safe for Russians to consume. The smuggled bottles were confiscated before more Russians could imbibe the enemy-produced water.
In response to the security breach, Gennadiy Onishchenko, director of the Rospotrebnadzor food security agency, said that his ever-alert office is suing a Belarusian company that allegedly sold the bottled menace. The same official earlier hinted that his office may drop the charges against Georgian water and wine if Tbilisi agrees to support Russia’s US-backed bid to enter the World Trade Organization.
