Mice or Men: Does Georgia Really Deserve the West?
OP-ED
Georgian men are all warriors. They are all amazing lovers; Ukrainian and Russian women swoon at the thought of them. They are real men, who know how to take charge, who know how to lead and how to take action.
Or so they would have us believe.
These are, in fact, aspirations rather than descriptions. When asked how they came to these conclusions, they will say straight faced that they have it on the authority of their fathers, grandfathers and friends. As watertight as they seem to think is, it does not stack up with reality.
The mighty Georgian men rarely get into fights with one another (unless they outnumber their opponent by a considerable margin), but will happily beat a woman half to death. Their reputation amongst contemporary Ukrainian and Russian women is appalling, with disappointed and harrassed female Ukrainian visitors to Kazantip 2014 insistent that they would never return to Georgia again. And despite being the best lovers in the world, the majority of their initial sexual experience comes from prostitutes.
And then there's the Georgian men who are given positions of authority.
It usually does not take long before any power they have gets abused. When a Western chain hotel in Tbilisi was given a Georgian general manager, the restaurant began to resemble a typical supra, with the manager and his bichos grinning at each other as they toasted their success (?) and loudly shouting to waitresses to attend to them. Examples at the political level are too numerous to count, but suffice it to say that the smug cronyism of the Georgian Dream government has become increasingly worse over the last four years.
Yet somehow, whichever unqualified hack was the Minister of Internal Affairs at the time, Georgia's police services seemed above all of the government's incompetence. Georgia's law enforcement was practical, readily available and ever-present.
That is, until recently.
Last year saw two particularly unsavoury incidents come to light. A journalist's car was driven off the road near Borjomi by drunk police officers; he was subsequently assaulted. Not long after, in Tbilisi's Vake district, a lawyer wanting to speak with his client in pre-trial detention was attacked by the police officers of the station. These incidents have been followed over the last month by the violent arrest of an ageing ice cream vendor, as well as Georgian law enforcement blatantly assisting in the extradition of Azerbaijani investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtali to Baku, and the arrest of Georgian rap duo Birja Mafia allegedly for possession of MDMA, but also just a day after the release of a satirical music video in which a police officer is depicted on all fours with a dog collar.
Mukhtali's abduction can be explained as Georgia being willing to do anything to please its resource-rich Azerbaijani partners; the arrest of Birja Mafia is a consequence of Georgian men being reactionary creatures and being more than willing to abuse their authority to settle a personal vendetta. The reasons behind the arrest of the ice cream vendor are more murky, but the video footage clearly shows two large policemen violently shoving the little old man into the back of a police car. Brave men, those. I wonder if they'd be so willing to fight against Russian invaders with the same manly spirit. Somehow, I think not.
One of the rappers, Mishka Mgaloblishvili, was randomly accosted on his way home the day after his video went online; the police then just happened to find MDMA on his person. It is a perfect example of the pathetic type of Georgian intrigue that in other countries would be ridiculed for its clumsiness, as when Saakashvili tried to remove Ivanishvili as an opponent by stripping him of his citizenship before the 2012 elections.
A lot more could be said here; a lot more could be examined and scrutinized, but I know that is happening elsewhere, in news outlets (including this one), on social media and – I hope – the corridors of the Mighty. Be that as it may. Apart from the tragedy of families being separated, and justice not only being blind but having a bag over her head, the Georgian government – which is supposed to be made up of the best people the country has to offer – has shown itself to be unworthy of inclusion with the West; its trade deals and visa-free success are worthless in the face of petty, vindictive bullying that achieves little and solves nothing.
By Anna Sponder