When I returned to Tbilisi, I walked up Rustaveli Avenue again, and saw the place where Malkhaz Machalikashvili, the father of Temirlan, was camped out in front of the national Parliament. Together with Zaza Saralidze, a man whose son was killed in an inadequately investigated street fight, he is seeking a public inquiry into his son’s death.
I was too shy to stop by the tent until the next time I returned to Tbilisi, but as it turned out, Mr. Machalikashvili was away that day, bringing Temirlan’s case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Less than two weeks after I left Georgia, the encampment was caught up in the middle of a protest about other issues that turned into a violent crackdown by the riot police, which in turn produced an ongoing grassroots political movement to reform Georgian politics. It’s a complex situation, but one upshot of the whole thing seems to be the increasing involvement of Pankisi’s Kists in mainstream Georgian politics.
Kartvelian Adventures 