[lbo-talk] Re: Eurasianism

[Grant Lee]

Human Rights - Abkhazia's Legacy: IDPs Languish at Iveria Hotel With No
VoteABKHAZIA'S LEGACY: IDPS LANGUISH AT IVERIA HOTEL WITH NO VOTE
Elizabeth Eagen: 8/27/03
A EurasiaNet Commentary
Just over a decade ago, the Iveria Hotel, which towers over Tbilisi's city
center, offered some of the best accommodations in Georgia available to
tourists. Today, the 15-storey hotel serves as a monument to the government'
s inability to address Georgia's myriad social and economic problems.
The hotel is now home to roughly 800 internally displaced persons (IDPs)
from the 1992-93 war in Abkhazia and the earlier conflict in South Ossetia.
The IDPs were initially to be merely temporary occupants of the Iveria.
Their stay, however, is now destined to stretch beyond 10 years.
Overall, the fighting in Abkhazia created approximately 260,000 IDPs, and
chances remain slim that they will return to the disputed territory soon.
[For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. After a ceasefire took
hold, Georgian officials helped "resettle" the internally displaced in
whatever space was available, including hotels. The Iveria quickly emerged
as the highest-profile IDP refuge.
The hotel provides a telling snapshot of how low Georgia's fortunes have
fallen. Laundry hangs from the windows, and residents have bricked or
boarded up half the balconies in order to expand cramped living quarters.
Bright blue tarpaulins weatherproof some of the makeshift walls. Wood
paneling and moldings torn from the corridors were burned for heating and
cooking; the hotel's guests have stripped it of anything they could use to
improve the apartments. Residents use portable gas burners or electric hot
plates set up in their bathrooms or balconies for cooking.

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http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/rights/articles/eav082703_pr.shtml