It should have just been a fun afternoon in Tbilisi’s Old Hippodrome, but the planned punk festival, the first in ages because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, took a violent turn when a group of neo-Nazis decided to disrupt it apparently because of one track, გერჩი – ყარს (Georgien über allen), by Georgian punk band, Gerchi.
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso has published my latest update on how the 2020 Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan might affect Georgia’s two largest ethnic minorities. In 2016, OpenDemocracy published a similar piece of mine following the 4-day war. Local ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani civil society activists warn that radicalisation among some individuals in the two communities continues, but that the situation still nonetheless remains relatively calm. This is an issue that does need to be monitored, however.
I’ll be quite honest. Five years ago, in 2015, when I was told that Psychonaut 4 would be performing in Tbilisi, I really wasn’t interested in going to see them live. I hadn’t heard of the band until then and I really had no idea where they were coming from musically.
Georgian protesters in Tbilisi have entered their fourth week of demonstrations in response to an official visit by Russian legislator Sergei Gavrilov to Georgia on June 20. While attending an inter-parliamentary meeting on Orthodoxy, Gavrilov angered many Georgians by addressing the Georgian Parliament in Russian from the parliamentary speaker’s chair.
Georgia is no stranger to the specter of international terrorism. But never has the threat struck so close to home as it did toward the end of last month. Panic, fear and anger quickly spread among the population when counterterrorism forces conducted an operation in the capital, Tbilisi, targeting a small group of militants believed to have links to the Islamic State. Drawing from the scant information available about the operation, it’s difficult to figure out precisely what happened.
Stratfor has published my piece on the mysterious disappearance from Tbilisi of Afgan Mukhtarli. Many believe that the dissident Azerbaijani journalist was abducted because of his writing and other activities.
A meeting yesterday with a visiting US researcher looking at far-right movements in Europe reminded me that I hadn’t posted any of the photos I’ve taken at various ultranationalist marches and counter protests that have happened in Tbilisi. I had used one in my recent piece for Stratfor on radicalization in Georgia, but haven’t had much time this past year to do anything other than post them on Facebook.
After covering last year’s One Caucasus Festival for Meydan TV there was no way I was going to miss this year’s. That was just as well as there was definitely more international media interest in the event that brings Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians together in a small, somewhat isolated village located about two hours away from Tbilisi.
One of the standout bands at this year’s One Caucasus Festival in Georgia was undoubtedly the Baku-based Les Gardiens du Silence, a collective playing improvised world and spiritual music. They had also performed in Tbilisi a week earlier, and did so again soon after the festival, but it was their performances around a campfire at One Caucasus that was the most enjoyable.