Steaming pan in hand, Dali Bassishvili stands at the door of his kitchenette with walls speckled with humidity, in the heart of the Karaleti displaced persons camp, near Gori, in Georgia. What does she think of the pro-Russian drift of the Georgian Dream party, in power since 2012? Who will she vote for in the legislative elections at the end of October? Dali smiles without saying a word. First, we eat. Herb tart, lentil soup, sun-cracked tomatoes, cream cheese, still warm grape paste… A swig of morello cherry alcohol to wash it down.
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Dali, 67 years old, with the bearing of a queen under his long gray hair, finally sits down at the table. If you only knew what life I had.
The same as that of its neighbors, who cluster in the 408 houses of Karaleti, 70 km from the demarcation line with South Ossetia, a region occupied by the Russians since the blitzkrieg of August 2008. Five days fighting had driven 28,000 Georgians from their homes, leaving only the Ossetian minority, around 50,000 people, in the separatist region. For sixteen years, most of the displaced people have still been living in the six permanent camps built urgently.
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From their previous life in the village of Kemerti, Dali and his neighbors were able to keep nothing. No photos, no papers, no house… “The Russians harassed and bombed us regularly” since the civil war which had already displaced 250,000 people between 1991 and 1993. But the horror took a step forward in 2008: “They razed our houses with bulldozers, as if to wipe us out of their memory”, says Dali.
So no question for her of live again under the Russian yoke
. In the legislative elections, on October 26, she will vote everything but the Georgian Dream
. She is stunned to see that the ruling party, while claiming to be pro-EU, refuses to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2022.
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