Feeling Safe in Georgia: A Comparison with the UK

Op-Ed

In recent years, Georgia has been feeling pretty pleased with itself for ranking so highly on the Ease of Doing Business Index and another in which it placed in the top five (if memory serves) of the world’s safest countries. I can’t speak to the former, since my only contribution to business here has been a valiant effort to keep Food Panda in the country by ordering a home delivery for every meal over the best part of two years, although it was ultimately in vain. However, Georgia’s placement on the Safety Index was entirely justified.

I don’t believe I have ever felt as safe anywhere as I do in Georgia, perhaps with the exception of rural France and Communist China (and I’d be willing to bet that’s the only time you’ll see those two listed together). It’s one of the first things I tell people in England or France when describing my life in Tbilisi, and the usual reaction is a raised eyebrow: rubbish, they’re thinking, that can’t possibly be true; he’s exaggerating, or else it’s the result of some heinous North Korea-style surveillance state. I don’t suppose you can blame them. They don’t hear much good coming from the East, what with Syria and Iraq to Georgia’s south and Russia and Ukraine to the north, and whenever Georgia itself makes the news it’s because priests have bashed up some gay people, or tigers are on the loose in Tbilisi, or Russian tanks have crossed the border. Thank God all three have never happened at the same time.

But it can also be hard for foreigners to believe when they visit Georgia, if they are unaccompanied by a Georgian or a foreigner who knows the place well. The sight of a pack of unkempt young Georgian men walking with slouched backs, the cigarettes in their mouths wiggling as they pause to spit on the street, is enough to convince most people to look out. Men behaving in a similar fashion in Britain, for instance, will not be averse to violence, or even robbery. The truth in Georgia, however, is that these bichos are essentially harmless. They might fancy themselves in the role of the mythical warrior Georgian man, but on the rare occasion that fights do break out, they are generally just a series of pushes and shouts about mothers, which is all quickly broken up by those present.

I never felt safe in England, and I wouldn’t today if I lived there, either: street violence is just too common, as are alcohol and drug abuse, and the law is not in anyone’s favor. I was raised by criminal lawyers who would come home with horror stories of nice young men who were set upon by thugs but managed to defend themselves, although when the end result was the attacker getting hurt it was the nice young men who were off to prison as often as not, for inflicting serious injuries. You have the choice of either not defending yourself, and thereby avoiding trouble of your own with the police but perhaps bleeding to death, or risking jail because you protected yourself. That would not happen in Georgia, as my lawyer friends here have told me.

Neither would an incident that happened to me the last time I was in England last September, something which reminded me why I wanted to leave and never want to go back. At a friend’s wedding, a drunken guest grabbed my wife and attempted to force himself on her. She pushed him off and called for help; furious though I was, I remained calm and warned him in rather strong terms that he’d best back down for his own good.

Now, at this point, I think that a Georgian man, drunk with wine and lust though he might have been, would still have backed off, perhaps with a sneer and a muttered curse about mothers, but not much more (and to do them justice, I don’t believe a Georgian man would have done it at all, no matter how drunk he was, at least not with the husband present; husband absent is regrettably a different story). Not this chap, though. He came at me swearing and muttering, and drew back his fist to strike me.

Well, I’ve been boxing since I was twelve, and if there’s one thing the Sweet Science teaches you, it’s the art of hitting without being hit. A quick left hook caught him right on the chin, and down he went. There was none of the jubilation I’d felt in the ring at similar moments, though, only a mounting dread of police cars: there was a nasty cut on his cheek, and he wasn’t moving; most people revive thirty seconds after a knockout, and for a bad few moments I thought I’d killed him. At this point I was thanking Providence that I’d taken Georgian citizenship, and pictured burning my British passport before fleeing back to Tbilisi and roaring for the best possible lawyer to fight any extradition charges that might come my way…but eventually he came round (sort of), although the blood from his cut made the damage look worse than it was. Thankfully I was amongst friends who saw what happened and were ready to support me in the face of the law, although it never came to that.

Don’t misunderstand me here: I’m not bragging. I was shaking like a leaf waiting to see if someone would call the police, and felt such rage at the unfairness of the situation: just because some bastard fancied my wife and thought he was a hard man meant that I had been put at risk of being attacked or being charged with assault. In those moments, I felt such longing and love for Georgia and its people (and its legal system) as I never have in my life. So no, don’t think that I’m boasting: I was very frightened (although really, any man who tries it on with another’s lady deserves all he gets, and my Georgian family seemed to agree: on returning home I was greeted with a silent nod and a firm handshake from my father-in-law, and gleeful giggles from the female contingent; two of the best compliments, in their way, that I’ve ever received).

It was a bad reminder of why I hated things in England, although no worse than a recent string of appalling attacks in London, with the perpetrators throwing acid in the faces of innocent people, and stabbings have become so common that they are barely even newsworthy anymore. Compare that with Georgia, when a recent stabbing in Vake set the whole country afire; how they would react if anyone did anything as disgusting as throwing acid I dread to think.

I’m over the word count by a mile, and there’s much more I could say, but I think that’s a nice point to end on – people here still care, and believe they can do something to change things. Marches and rallies and public outcry achieve things in Georgia. You could not feel more powerless in England, in the face of appalling crimes that no longer shock and a government that does not listen – and probably doesn’t want to.

Tim Ogden