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comes and says feeds now in the palm of your. com. more news today violence has once again fled up the phone these are the images the world. lead. only a poll ninth nine hundred ninety one georgia achieved independence from the u.s.s.r. . before a violent standoff with a rapidly disintegrating soviet empire. we did get independence but it resulted in much blood and destruction. a civil war broke out in georgia ok ms de souza came

sovereignty to this day the nation has been unable to overcome its aftermath the country's infrastructure is in ruins tens of thousands of people fled the country in the top of the soviet union georgia was one of the wealthiest republics today one third of the population lives below the poverty line twenty years have passed but people here enjoy less freedom and they did during the soviet period. back in one thousand nine hundred eighty it will seek its measure really was just a student to join the mass hunger strike outside government headquarters at that time the country was still cool to the georgian soviet socialist republic. that hunger strike which lasted eight or nine days triggered a movement of liberation i often sat on the steps with my friends. the number of

protesters good day by day. the then a young historian lend his support to the cools. it independence was my watchword at that time i didn't miss a single public action all right. in april listening thousands of people gathered in tbilisi from an open ended rally outside government headquarters they wanted independence for the republican ga. the camps afoot the leader of a nationalist movement was the speaker who made the most extremist remarks in an intensely dramatic speech. in the early hours of april ninth the soviet government despised ahmed vehicles and soldiers against peaceful demonstrators sixteen people died and hundreds were injured. say a mathematician and would be magnets of georgia was lucky enough to evade even

injury. we were in too much of a hurry we were trying to study history to help move it forward what happened then had to happen but of course the thought the georgian might become independent is ninety ninety one never crossed my mind back in the late one nine hundred eighty s. . here comes the heard you became the first president of the sovereign georgia in april nine hundred ninety one after an election campaign where independence was the catch phrase but it soon as he came to power he didn't expect that independence from georgia or from its regions or south ossetia would demand sovereignty into ethnic conflicts began georgia responded by sending troops to south the says here. than a year later because the. people were once neighbors became bitter enemies thousands of refugees fled to georgia where.

as far as i know years ago this building was meant to be a hospital. but there is no hospital in it now. and the building is used as a shelter for refugee camps. thousands of the georgians who have left since the early one nine hundred ninety s. still live in makeshift shelters they have lost everything homes jobs and even the hope to return to their home country georgians and abkhazians alike have gone through a lot of suffering such as the horrors of war and loss of loved ones and yet they don't blame one another for that conflict. i think it is nobility sions have toned people apart there was no animosity between individuals my neighbor said to me what am i supposed to do one of my sons in law is in a pansy and that means my grandsons are peasants aren't they need another daughter is american a georgian so her children are georgians join me to tell my grandsons apart what am

i supposed to do in this situation the. bitter fighting between georgia standing army and causing insurgents cost thousands of lives on the place sorry. tomorrow is no cause young woman four of her five sons died in the war the youngest was seventeen when he volunteered to fight his grave is close to his father's. you have an opinion of that i would really like to have the word war confined to the history books if the reason i want new body to ever author is again i wanted to be forgotten all together. tomorrow and the husband wanted the new house to have enough room for all the children and their future families but now it's almost uninhabited one of the rooms houses

a memorial museum to their family it features their son's medals they received and the letters they sent from the front line to more especially treasures objects made by her children i could put in this is the root of a pine tree they made a heart out of it. you. my second son enjoyed making such things here she died in a battle on the same day as my youngest son. many georgian opposition parties and even spearhead gamsakhurdia as former associates demonstrated their discontent with the rule georgian intellectuals and numerous letters to the president asking him to come to his senses. responded by imposing censorship. and ninety ninety one law even denied registration for all political parties it was indorsed by people who had served terms in soviet prisons and campaigned for

georgia's freedom and independence. those people did what they themselves have been opposed to. they trained to become a mathematician in the early one nine hundred ninety s. he left university and went into business his elder brother chose the career of an actor today he's very popular in georgia. his songs in short films have an uncanny bearing on the country's present day situation. i had no desire to get involved in the war in a cause here i'm such a war where brothers were killing brothers so i just wanted to stay away from

georgia for a time it was there were. those who were displeased with the first president gathered to openly demand his resignation the nine hundred ninety two standoff between protesters and the regime erupted into street fighting involving artillery and tanks. could had to flee the country. six it was shevardnadze with georgia's second president the experience political heavyweights the fact michel good rituals perestroika soon after he took office he lifted the ban on opposition political parties and allowed independent media were not to go after i went into business and nine hundred ninety three i launched a project called. over ten years i turned a small studio in the provincial town and for a study into a leading national broadcaster. the first study to t.v.

channel rushed out of the country's new leaders including president eduard shevardnadze and was focused on runaway corruption. corruption in the economic sphere was enormous of the seven knots or came to power but on the other hand business man learns new skills in june with modern times a real market economy took shape true there was pervasive corruption from top to bottom but there was also freedom of speech and individual liberty a sort of quagmire that we have now didn't exist. independent t.v. channel first of it too became a so-called platform for the opposition and had great political weight the president shevardnadze who declared freedom of speech as a principle made no attempt to sway the channels editorial policy. the worst of it to t.v. channel and other georgian media pave the way for radical political transformations november two thousand and three saw

a bloodless coup in georgia dubbed the rose revolution michel suckers really a young and ambitious person came to power. when i tended my resignation of my own free will to prevent bloodshed when they burst into the house of parliament i went out into the street to meet my followers of any order coming from me is the law for the army no down the army was of defeated them then the author of blood task i make no distinction between see signs all of them and georgian citizens. mission failed saakashvili have promised to beat corruption and lead the nation to prosperity however it was the press that was the first victim of his law and order.

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cause a report on our key. as soon as really took power he attempted to take control of the editorial policy of the country's leading independent t.v. channel. to its own skits mellish really realize that his window of opportunity was quite narrow. to short the authorities ambition to take control of the channel it goes back to two thousand and four the new system of government simply weak we thought we needed to build a viable state first and then take care of the rest of us with as it turned out the regime's aim was to take control of the channels i take the blame for what i did because i gave away restudy to you know i didn't want to rock the boat going all in as about the same time george's media was going out of its way to report on mikhail second police reforms on face value the changes look quite impressive petty crime

had been stamped out people now felt more secure on the streets of the towns often . traffic patrols but stopped taking bribes. it does exist through the country's traffic police are totally free from corruption. but you can get your license within a day after pain rates through official channels. instead of flying in somebody's stock it's. for many years. with speaker of the country's parliament and one of my. closest associates in two thousand and eight she resigned from the post parliamentary speaker and found opposition party oh yes there is a very serious problem it's corruption in the elite it has grown even larger compared to what it was like in the last years of shevardnadze this route when everybody was talking about corruption in georgia's government. it was always an

opposition moderates to saakashvili as the owner of a major medical insurance company he knows all too well the meaning of so-called elite corruption sockets really will assume the second really in his inner circle came to power they set about collecting taxes and so-called dirty money which was that they sent very many people to prison businessmen as well as former officials among them normal people realize they had better pay off as much as they were expected to pay i sold the property they ceded their shares in businesses to members of suckers billie's party prosecutors office and the interior ministry kept a close eye on the deals this man. pent up discontent fun erupted into a mass rally in november two thousand and seven according to various estimates fifty to one hundred thousand opposition supporters came to the house a problem and into d.c. . for several days they kept around the clock vigil on nov seventh police

violently dispersed the peaceful rally hundreds of demonstrators were injured please take us. police beat up people lying on the ground platinums. the only remaining independent t.v. channel showed these events in tbilisi to a nationwide audience it was late shut down while it was on the air with regular news bulletin. to the middle of the middle seems like closing the channel the government is violating the constitution this means that this is a dictatorship regime misdemeanors here they are coming into the studio i want to say thank you i hear shots in the control room you know which i hope our employees will be enjoyed here are our guests. the independent journalist of a coma he'd say became popular in georgia in the mid one nine hundred ninety s.

he enjoys all skiing unpleasant questions no matter who is in power he says now in hiding in switzerland his latest piece of investigative journalism concerns the armed conflict between georgia and south a city in two thousand and eight. on this one you. know journalist who would not have wanted to get his handle to get the facts. but all the state media summed up my work there is high treason. the self-proclaimed republic of south ossetia hasn't been under georgia's direct rule since nine hundred ninety two we shall cyclists really repeated many times the republic had to return to georgia and he promised to settle the situation through diplomacy. we don't need a war and there has been an ascension people don't need one either there is a force that wants the defeat of the georgian at has in a city and i promise they won't let it happen i knew much.

but in the early hours of this the altering repeated showed symbolic from georgian territory in the morning troops were sent into the republic. it was the start of a military operation described by second villi of the introduction of constitutional order in the turret treat south as such. i was woken up by a lot of noise everything was for. that shaking we men outside was screaming and crying it was as if all of us had landed in hell after all canuck corruption and everybody stayed awake throughout the night the noise never died down but even for a second. color man could hurt a lot of lives in an old house on the outskirts of the village of kalak cooler

fifteen kilometers from the border with south of setia he is not interested in politics and doesn't know the first thing about international relations but all it is from around the world for his home to display their works one of the projects was called liquid art it was to have been implemented jointly with russian artists in late september two thousand and eight. the georgian word for this place is from around here this is in places like this the georgians traditionally make wine now to suit different nationalities are going to contribute to georgian traditions they will get in there to press grapes with their feet just as it was done in the old days a year later we were going to jointly made product i wine brand called liquid aren't. in the spring of two thousand and eight karen man began building a pavilion for the exhibition he was still constructing it in august when another war broke out between south says here in georgia. i went on

building the pavilion during the war fighting was going on right behind the mountain fifteen kilometers from here i saw the flashes and heard the bombings i also saw helicopters up in the air this. hostilities came to an end nine days later when russia sent troops into south of setia to separate the warring parties georgia subsequently broke off diplomatic relations with russia. when investing come a he was working on a film about the georgian city and conflict he made arrangements for an interview with european human rights campaigners to be held in geneva shortly before he was

due to go the journalist received a tip off that he had better stay in switzerland. all sorts of problems cropped up after my return from senegal i won't talk about them because my words might get in the way of the investigation. i can only tell you that i received open threats and heard something so accumulating that i can't repeat it. no comma he'd say lives in a swiss hostel for political refugees friends keep them abreast of events by. i here again just with one's. ok how would you that's right you know it's over by that time he must complete all formalities concerning immigration chances are i myself will return home by then that there is a regime change. did he say regime change yes why not that's a possibility. we hope so. and so somebody has been friends ever since they went to school together when

parliament appointed to the post of he gave his friend a job in his office when his first term of office came to an end the noid him a second term now the journalist is in hiding in a foreign country the ex is unemployed. if i had praised the authorities i would have been elected term they would even have changed the law to let me for ten terms . in the last presidential election live on which was officially the runner up his party's headquarters supplied the zero s c e commission with evidence documenting scores irregularities some of them made public in the commission's conclusions but the final report ultimately described the election as a valid. you

you get such a lot say is a famous georgian musician in protest against the psycho regime he decided to barricade themselves in a television studio made up to look like a prison cell for several months he stayed in the room with four t.v. cameras tracking his every move. today george remains present all of georgia as a present of the georgian people made a mistake by electing what i call an illegitimate person. politician sportsman and artists all visit his cell to support the musician. heads the leading or physician party the visit his brother three times during his self-imposed imprisonment. how are you so so what are you i get loads of letters to castles are full of them already a dozen nuts they may just saying time to make. his one

man prison show again of the eleven pm and last till morning the following day the whole country would discuss what have been said during the night after two months of self confinement the only potential love they took time out for a public appearance at the d.c. stadium leaving a cage in the midst of the show was a strikingly symbolic act the people who had filled the stadium and adjacent roads turned guilty a chechen left the show into what amounted to a protest rally. on april ninth two thousand and nine leaders of all opposition parties ows their followers to take to the streets and to b.c. . just felt get out second street get out saakashvili yes now gets out do you feel he has never said saakashvili is our president we call him

a de facto rather than does your president. today the former participants in the rallies for georgia's independence. into a party. with our aim is to create a party that is without parallel and georgian history it should be a party based on genuine national values shared by most people in our country. the leader of the new party is live. a former magnus in the wind industry he has the support of the kids mellish really the architect of the country's leading television company and george's last ambassador to russia the party's third leader is a historian who has won the nation's affection as an honest woman. other georges rulers in recent years have been so different the one would be hard put to say which of them is fully to blame for the present day situation there are no independent courts of law democratic institutions are not allowed to develop in the countries people are intimidated in the autumn of two thousand and eight

a group of friends met in old warehouses turned into studios in moscow they were all says who were keen to participate in an international project that was to take place in the home of kut a man who took a loud say that of the wall this is a remarkably exquisite european style project but i think we need to make slight changes to emphasize a note of sorrow in it merrymaking is out of place after what happened with if you don't do that at a funeral the funeral still goes on and all. the russian artists didn't visit their georgian friends in either two thousand and eight or later they have decided against going to georgia for the toy for they do not fall in politics they believe that in their beautiful country of long traditions funerals will give way to weddings and the street protests else did by projects concerts and theatre festivals.

hey tom are in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

mission. critical three. four charges three. three. three. three. olds a lot of video for your media project. to our teeth on tom.