Stray Animals Day, Vake Park, Tbilisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
Yesterday saw another action in Tbilisi’s Vake Park, but this time to mark Stray Animals Day. Although officially marked on 4 April, actions at the Guerrilla Gardening Tbilisi Camp usually take place on Saturdays or Sundays, hence this event being held on the 5th.
Dog lovers brought their own pets, many of which were pedigree breeds, while puppies and other strays found new homes. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how many people would turn up for the action, but numbers were very good indeed.
Dogs and cats should have a home. But stray dogs and stray cats don’t. They lead poor and miserable lives on the streets, often illfed, suffering extreme heat, cold, and diseases, even more often being chased around by hostile and violent civilians and authorities.
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April 4. The Day to show Compassion, deploy initiatives to Care, and get into Action for stray animals all over our planet.
In fact, as the weather improves it looks likely that attendance at events in Vake Park is set to rise as Tbilisi residents seek to relax outdoors. A new investigative video report by Studio Monitor is also sure to help.
It’s definitely a must watch, and raises a lot questions and concerns about the construction of the planned hotel that activists have successfully frustrated to date. Potentially, a report like this could lead to even more public protest. It’s in Georgian with English subtitles above.
More international media interest is also emerging, with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) the latest to cover the protest.
Activists who have set up a protest camp in a central Tbilisi park say they are fighting to save one of the Georgian capital’s rare green spaces.
The city government has given planning permission for a seven-storey hotel on the site of a long-defunct restaurant in Vake Park, an area that activists say is one of the capital’s most precious open spaces.
“Many generations of people in Tbilisi grew up in this park,” said Tiko Suladze, who regularly attends the “Guerrilla Gardening” protest against the development plans. “I spent my childhood here. People used to come from other parts of the city, and children still love it. You can say this is a cult place for Tbilisi residents.
“Now there are buildings all around us, and if they build a hotel here as well, it will mean that we haven’t just lost Vake Park, we’ve lost our city.”
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According to the NGO Safe Space, some of Tbilisi’s parks have lost 90 per cent of their area in the last decade, at least partly thanks to defects in the laws that should have protected them.
The Guerrilla Gardening protest began at the end of last year, and activists have set up small, symbolic barriers on the site of the planned hotel.
“They would be easy to take away of course,” Nato Peradze, one of the leaders of the protest, told IWPR. “They are psychological barricades. Our people are the real barricades. We have set up tents and now we’re in the park round the clock. We have a timetable so that there’s always one of the activists in the park at night. This has worked, and construction has stopped.”
Local residents brought the activists fuel, food and water over the winter, which was unusually cold.
Meanwhile, as usual, more on the Vake Park protests are available here on this blog while Guerrilla Gardening Tbilisi have a Facebook page here. Some photos from yesterday’s stray animal event are below with many more on my Facebook page.
