Word: georgians
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...Georgian and South Ossetian blood is very closely connected," says Fatima, 50, as she hems a pillowcase while sitting in the courtyard of her apartment building in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. "South Ossetian girls would marry Georgian boys and South Ossetian boys would marry Georgian girls. But today, today there is no connection - it's all been lost." South Ossetia, in northern Georgia, had been a source of tension long before Russia and Georgia fought their brutal five-day war over the region a year ago. Since then, South Ossetia has declared its independence, but Georgia refuses...
...July, one of my cousins died in a village near [the Georgian capital of] Tbilisi and I couldn't go to the funeral because the border is still closed," says Fatima, who won't give her last name because she is afraid family she has in Georgia could face consequences if people found out they are related to South Ossetians. "Just yesterday I got an SMS from my aunt asking how the family is doing. We haven't seen them in more than a year. Keeping up family relations through text messages? Is that a way to live?" She adds...
...that have been split by the war. "Right after the conflict there were lots of requests from people seeking to be reunited with their families," says Marina Tedeti, spokeswoman for the ICRC operating in South Ossetia. Since the end of the war - and with the support of both the Georgian and the South Ossetian governments - the organization has brought 320 people back together with their families through what Tedeti calls "a small but quite delicate" process. (See pictures of the history of the Red Cross...
...reunifications can be wrenching affairs in such a confused atmosphere, as people come to realize that choosing between family members means having to choose whether to be Georgian or South Ossetian - in some cases, children find themselves forced to decide between one parent or another. "We repeatedly and clearly explain that this decision is final - now and forever," says Tedeti. "If they change their mind, they cannot come back...
...Some people have tried to avoid making such decisions and have paid with their lives. There are rumors of people bribing soldiers to get them across the border and though the risks of crossing illegally are high, people still try. On July 31, a Georgian man was killed and his family members wounded when he drove their car over a mine while trying to bypass a checkpoint to get from Georgia into the South Ossetian-controlled village of Akhalgori. (See pictures of the Russians in Ossetia...