The Death of a Journalist

My friend Natalia Antelava has written a moving tribute to Alisher Saipov, a campaigning Uzbek journalist who was among the very few who dared to shed light on events in that repressive Central Asian state. Alisher was shot dead this week outside his office. He was 26. Read more here.

Homo Post-Sovieticus

Reality made an unwelcome intrusion into one of Georgia's leading reality-television shows recently, when 20-year-old youth was asked to leave the series after he announced on air that he was homosexual. The director of the channel which screens the show said the lad didn’t fit in with the ‘positive’ image they wanted to portray. The excellent website Eurasianet has the details here.

This is the second 'gay scandal' over the past few months in Georgia - a strongly religious and socially conservative society. The first started when rumours spread that an event here in Tbilisi promoting 'tolerance and inter-cultural dialogue' was actually going to be a Gay Pride parade. “Pederasts are Getting Ready for a Parade in Tbilisi,” proclaimed the headline in one local rag. The organisers then cancelled the event because, they said, they feared participants could be attacked if it went ahead. This was the piece I wrote about it for The Moscow Times:

It was the campest thing I’d seen on television in quite a while. A Georgian boy band composed of four young hunks in camouflage uniforms was preening and strutting its way through a cheesy disco stomp, intercut with footage of musclebound soldiers doing their stuff out on manoeuvres. It looked like the kind of act you might see wowing the Muscle Marys at one of Europe’s more tacky gay clubs.

But Georgia is a country where that kind of love still dares not speak its name, and where the closet remains home sweet home to any homosexual who values their personal safety. In Moscow, gays get beaten and busted if they attempt to show some pride. In Tbilisi, they haven’t even dared to try it. A few weeks ago, wild and unsubstantiated rumours spread about ‘sexual minorities’ participating in a city parade. Cue moral outrage, and the appearance of the Georgian Orthodox Patriarch to advise that any such ‘procession’ would be ‘unacceptable’, and might even cause riots.

This being the Caucasus, where rumour is a valued currency, scurrilous gossip about the sexual proclivities of top political figures circulates freely. But while tales of the nocturnal exploits of heterosexual politicians raise smiles, an open declaration of gayness would be career suicide. Literally, in one case, if the stories are true.

A few months back, I met some courageous youths who had set up Georgia’s first gay-rights group. They were wary about revealing their full names, and I won’t repeat them here.

“Violence is everyday thing if a person is visible as a homosexual,” one of them told me. “The response when people come out as gay to family members is usually negative, including being kicked out of the house, being locked up in a room, or being taken to psychiatrists.

“There is kind of a gay scene, but there is no regular place. It’s only a community of maybe 150-200 people who are ‘out’. But it’s not stable. If a place becomes known to be gay-friendly, homophobic people come in and try to stop it.”

Afterwards, I went out onto the street to ask people what they thought about this new organisation for Georgian homosexuals. Surprisingly, most of the women I spoke to thought it was wonderful - although I quickly realised that they actually had no idea what I was talking about. “It’s good there is an organisation that will enable them to get help,” said one middle-aged shopper. “Maybe they can be cured of this sickness.”

The men were somewhat less forgiving. “It goes against God’s law,” went one response. “I think it would be better if they were dead.”

The Tartan Army in Tbilisi

Georgians have been amazed and bemused by the unprecedented invasion of some 2,500 Scottish football fans for a Euro 2008 qualifying match this week. "The Bravehearts are in the Streets," headlined one sports newspaper, describing the Scots as "crazies" who "drink spirits like fish drink water".

Most of the Scots are wearing kilts, which is somewhat unusual in a country where some people consider men in shorts to be dressed in a rather effeminate fashion. "I looked out of the window this morning and there were lots of men in dresses walking past," one young Georgian remarked to me. "I laughed about it all day." The British ambassador here has even published an open letter warning fans that "Georgia is a conservative and proud society", so they should not under any circumstances lift their kilts because it "would probably cause grave offence and possibly lead to confrontation".

The amazement turned to jubilation when a rather juvenile Georgian team - "Georgia's young Bravehearts", as one local football correspondent described them - spanked the Scots 2-0. Afterwards, Tbilisi's main street was serenaded by a cacophony of car horns and screaming fans. Even the station announcers on the Tbilisi metro were in a party mood. Instead of saying what the next stop would be, one of them yelled over the Tannoy: "Go, Georgia!"

Another Georgian newspaper's reaction to the result: "‘What happened to the Royal Dog of Scotland? Why was it replaced by a trembling lapdog? Why were the Scots bent and broken without much effort by the legion of Georgian crusaders?" (I have no idea what 'Royal Dog' they're talking about.)

A Georgian friend of mine put it more sympathetically: "We have a saying here," he told me just after the final whistle. "We say, 'The ball is round, so it can go in any direction.'"

Boney M and the Disco President

The rumours were true: Boney M - or at least a band calling themselves Boney M - played a gig in a tiny village in the conflict zone in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia today, paid for by the Georgian authorities as part of their 'hearts and minds' campaign to make the Russian-backed separatists a couple of kilometres away look like fools with no funk.

Hundreds of people made their way to the village across a mountain dirt track which circumnavigates separatist territory, in buses, cars and on foot, while armed men in camouflage stood guard against potential separatist snipers. As the band camped it up (see photo above), the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was grooving happily stage-front, all smiles, giving out autographs like ... well, like Daddy Cool, frankly.

When I interrupted his fun to ask him what he thought he could achieve by bringing a bunch of '70s pop stars to this remote, volatile, bullet-raddled region, he replied: "Well, you know, this is kind of a disco approach to conflict resolution. By doing this, we hope that we'll lure out people from their trenches, force them to drop Kalashnikovs and come here and dance with the others, and understand that nothing is as nice as peace, nothing is as nice as reconciliation." Then President Misha nodded his head, shuffled his feet, and got right back into the groove.

A disco approach to conflict resolution...

Saturday Night Fever in the Conflict Zone

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution," runs the famous quote often attributed to the anarchist Emma Goldman. Well, the Georgian government seems to have taken it to heart - disco poppets Boney M are due to play a gig in the South Ossetian conflict zone this week, as part of the government's campaign to regain control over the separatist region. Incredible but true - although it's not clear exactly which Boney M will be performing. There are said to be three different bands touring the world using the same name. This is from my column in 'The Moscow Times':

“Ra-Ra-Rasputin! Russia’s greatest love machine!” These are not exactly the kind of lyrics you might expect the Georgian government to consider appropriate as part of its struggle to win back control of the tiny pro-Russian separatist region of South Ossetia. Nevertheless, those flamboyant disco-era swingers, Boney M, are on their way to the Georgian-controlled sector of the South Ossetian conflict zone this month.

Yes, Boney M playing live in a rural village in volatile South Ossetia. Not a sentence I thought I would ever be writing, even amid the everyday surrealism of life in the Caucasus. But maybe someone around here thought that a sweet blast of ‘Sunny’, not to mention the deathless ‘Daddy Cool’, would help convince the separatists that Georgia has all the best tunes.

This is not the first time, however, that the Georgian authorities have invoked the alchemical power of disco to win hearts and minds. Earlier this year, President Mikheil Saakashvili announced that a discotheque would be constructed in the South Ossetian village of Tamarasheni, so Georgian and Ossetian youths could lay down their weapons and rave together in peace and loving harmony – one nation under a groove, indeed. Of course he didn’t use these words exactly, but now the place is built and the veteran crooners of Boney M are coming. Misha has delivered, and in style.

The Georgian protest campaign aimed at ousting the South Ossetian separatist leader, Eduard Kokoity, has also been using pop music to rally the faithful. Its anthem – ‘Kokoity, Farewell!’ – is a funky mix of Georgian and Ossetian rappers and traditional singers. When they launched the campaign, they pumped up the volume high enough to unnerve the separatist strongman in his lair just across the de facto border – or so they say.

The pop propagandists haven’t ignored Georgia’s other breakaway region, Abkhazia, either. A rock video clip which is getting serious rotation here shows smiley-faced Georgians waving national flags as they head off to Abkhazia in trains, boats, old Ladas and even planes. It’s something of a wishful fantasy, considering the antipathy still felt towards Georgians in parts of Abkhazia which remain scarred by the civil war in the ‘90s. But it’s in perfect harmony with the government’s efforts to make people believe that regaining control over the rebel regions is possible, despite the bloodshed and enmity of the past.

And so back to the main event - the arrival of Boney M. The cultural triumph would be complete if Misha was there to see them rock the South Ossetian house, perhaps wearing a Travolta-style white suit, out on the dancefloor with the strobelights flashing and the bassline pumping: Daddy Cool, incarnate.

Irakli's Remorse - A Georgian Drama, Part II

The former Georgian defence minister, Irakli Okruashvili, detonated a scandal here when he accused President Mikheil Saakashvili of leading a criminal government. Today, less than two weeks later, a nervous, tired, clearly unhappy Okruashvili appeared on videotape recanting the sensational allegations he had made about murder plots, cowardice, greed and corruption in high places - and confessing that it was he who had really been the naughty boy. Rumours are already fizzing around Tbilisi about why, exactly, he retracted - and what damage he has done to Saakashvili's international image. Read more here.

Surrealism in South Ossetia

South Ossetia, a tiny breakaway region within Georgia, on the border with Russia, held its 'independence day' celebrations recently - although no country in the world recognises it as independent. The nurses in this picture were in a parade making its way along Stalin Street, which heads all the way up through the Caucasus mountains into the Russian Federation. The extravaganza also featured butchers, bakers, furniture vendors and tractor drivers. No candlestick makers, unfortunately - at least not that I saw. There's more info about it here.

Rebels in 'The Guardian'

Jon Savage, the author of the best-ever history of punk rock, 'England's Dreaming', has reviewed my new book, 'The Time of the Rebels', for the British newspaper, 'The Guardian'. Read what he had to say here.

Irakli's Revenge - A Georgian Drama

Allegations of murder plots, greed, cowardice, authoritarianism and corruption, arrests of former government insiders and street protests calling for the overthrow of the president... read more about the political scandal which has gripped Georgia over the past week here.