Word: gori
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Several Russian officials, confronted by aid officials with evidence of widespread looting in the occupied Georgian city of Gori, said the area is not their responsibility because it is legally Georgian territory. But human rights monitors reject that argument. "This area [now occupied by Russian troops] is effectively under Russian control. The Georgian military is not there, so Russia has a responsibility to protect civilians there," says Giorgi Gogia, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Georgia. In Tskhinvali, however, locals say the Russian presence has helped re-establish security. "When the Russian army came," says Misha Masurashvili, a gangly...
...They did this because they don't want us to come back," said Iosif Zadashvili, a resident of Kurta, which lies off the main road. The white-haired man sat dazed in the Georgian town of Gori on a chair made for a child, his lower lip trembling, as he related how Russian soldiers had stood by while Ossetian irregulars beat him in the courtyard of his home, knocking out all of his lower front teeth...
...Earlier in the week, officials from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Services cleared the Georgian villages of old men and women who had stayed behind to protect property and livestock. They were brought to the Georgian city of Gori, which is still controlled by the Russian army. The grandmothers and grandfathers told of Ossetian irregulars from both north and south of the Russian border coming into their villages and threatening to kill them...
...soon as the prized objects had been stored in a "secret location that cannot be revealed," Maglakelidze repeatedly tried and failed to cross the Russian lines to get back to his museum and make sure it was intact. From the outskirts of Gori I spoke to him by phone earlier in the day and pointed out, to his evident frustration, that with Russian tanks blockading the town the time wasn't yet right. He told me he hoped that the Russian troops will protect the landmark, out of respect for the leader who is undergoing a small revival in public...
...According to Maglakelidze, the museum's visitors include as many foreigners as local Georgians, many of whom are less critical of Stalin than Westerners. "The people in Gori they like Stalin a lot, " he explained. (The town is also home to the world's biggest Stalin statue, standing an impressive 30 feet tall.) "To me, he was a rare phenomenon. How else could someone born in such a tiny place grow up to become the leader of a great nation? He was a great strategist and a tactician, as we saw with the defeat of Hitler...