As employees of the
ICRC Tskhinvali office, Hamlet and Artur started their security
shift on 7 August. It ended on 20 August, when they saw the
flags on the vehicles of the first ICRC humanitarian convoy
entering South Ossetia. During the fighting they kept the
gates of the ICRC premises open — people,
looking for shelter, were coming all the time. “The
neighbours knew that this was a Red Cross building, we had
planted the flag on the second-floor balcony for that reason,”
recalls Artur. “Almost 40 people, mostly women and children,
hid in the basement. They were terribly frightened, literally
trembling with fear. I was thinking constantly ‘how
are my parents?’, knowing they were worrying about me.
As soon as the skirmishes calmed down a little, I ran home
— just for ten minutes — and came back immediately.”
Three times armed men in masks entered the compound threatening
to ransack the office and set it on fire. Each time Artur
and Hamlet talked them into abandoning the idea. “We
knew that closing the gates, barring them or resisting in
any way made no sense. And you cannot argue much with a tank,
you know! The only way to save the office, and the people
who entrusted themselves to us, was to convince the visitors
that the Red Cross is a humanitarian organization that aims
to help people and does not take part in politics. We were
lucky: we were heard and believed, although it seemed unbelievable.”
Eventually the lull came on 20 August. “People could
leave the shelter. Our neighbour invited us to dinner and
served us cold beer. That’s when we realized the war
was over,” recall Artur and Hamlet.
Tracing from Tbilisi
At the start of the crisis, Pikria Javashvili, 22, heard
the ICRC was looking for English-speaking field officers to
join their protection team. Javashvili, who had studied international
humanitarian law and knew about the ICRC, called her friend,
Nino Berianidze. “I was fed up just watching what was
happening on TV and not doing anything to help,” recalls
Berianidze, 20.
Both young women applied for the job and were recruited within
days.
Lela Lazishvili, 25, also heard about the position through
a friend. “I wanted to come and see with my own eyes
what was happening,” she says. Student doctor Keti Chichinadze,
25, and Tamar Kvaratskhelia, 23, complete the team.
Much of the women’s work involves responding to requests
from the protection team in Tskhinvali for help in finding
relatives of vulnerable, elderly and sick villagers living
in South Ossetia, who became separated from their loved ones
when younger family members left for Gori or Tbilisi at the
start of the war. They then help to reunite the families.
The work has all the hallmarks of adetective story. Berianidze
remembers one case in particular. “I was looking for
the daughter of an old, bedridden woman from a village outside
Tskhinvali. I found the daughter in Tbilisi but she thought
that her mother had died. When I spoke to her and told her
that we thought we had found her mother, she asked me all
sorts of questions. She couldn’t believe it was really
her, but it was. When we reunited them here at the delegation,
I will never forget the look of joy on the daughter’s
face.” |
The ICRC distributed hygiene items, kitchen sets, bed linen
and other household items.
©ANASTASIA ISSYUK / ICRC
Wide-ranging support From the outset,
the Red Cross
Society of Georgia distributed emergency relief to
displace people, recruited blood donors and provided
psychosocial support. At the same time, the Russian
Red Cross Society provided hygiene articles, blankets,
clothes and other assistance to people who fled South
Ossetia, took care of hundreds of unaccompanied minors,
gave psychosocial support and started a find-raising
campaign. |
|
