26-year-old civil activist Gohar Agjoyani was born and raised in the village of Didi Aragali, Ninotsminda municipality.

She is a psychologist by profession. In addition, she studies at the teacher training program, conducts trainings and works with her friends in a non-governmental organization operating in Samtskhe-Javakheti, which focuses on youth issues.

As she tells us, she had a long way to go before she convinced herself that he had the strength to fight to change the reality full of challenges. She recalls that her participation in the projects of civil organizations and the experience gained there helped her significantly on this path.

Gohar tells Aprili Media about her life, the problems in her native Samtskhe-Javakheti and the role of non-governmental organizations in fighting the mentioned problems. She also shares her thoughts on the Russian law passed by the current government, the October elections and how these processes affect ethnic minorities living in Georgia.

The Beginning of the Battle

Didi Aragali is a small village with big problems. When I was younger, I didn’t notice these problems much because I was more focused on myself. I don’t remember my childhood years well, because I grew up in difficult conditions. I was the only one in the village who did not have a mother from birth. In addition to this, there was no water, no electricity, no internet… I often felt from my peers that I was not what they thought they were.

I was always trying to prove that, despite poverty and difficult conditions, I could be like others: wear neat clothes to school, study well… In the process, sometimes I lost my edge: for example, I studied two or three lessons instead of one, and when they praised me, It satisfied me psychologically.

I always thought that the way I was treated was my fault. However, in the eighth grade, a Georgian teacher came to our village and taught me that I was not to blame for what was happening in our village and how I felt; She explained to me that there is another world beyond this village.

This girl was the first Georgian in my life: before that I had no contact with Georgians. After that, somehow I fell in love with the Georgian language, Georgia… I had the feeling that what was happening was not the reality I wanted to live in. I realized that I had to fight for something and I started this fight.

Purpose

Our region used to be more isolated. It’s the same now, we’ve just progressed in some respects: at least in terms of the fact that many young people are already studying in Tbilisi, speak the Georgian language, etc. However, years ago this was not the case and I felt like a stranger. I was a stranger not only in my village, but in Georgia in general, because I did not know the language properly, we were not taught; Because we had a lot of problems in the region…

I kept thinking that if I study in Tbilisi, I will be a stranger there too. There was also a time when I preferred to continue my studies in Armenia. In the end, I was admitted to both Armenia and Tbilisi, although I still decided that “no, let it be difficult, but I will stay where I was born and grew up.”

I also thought that if I was alone in my childhood facing my problems, now I could go to Tbilisi, study, gather knowledge and experience, and then return to my region and be a hope and a friend for the children there; They should have the same confidence in me as I had in that Georgian teacher.

Vakho Kareli / Aprili Media

Women Who Motivated Me

As I already said, this process was not easy, there was also the problem of the language barrier, I had a slightly different way of thinking, I was a closed-off child… However, informal education and non-governmental organizations helped me to overcome all this.

When I was in the twelfth grade, I attended a training for the first time. At the time, I didn’t even know what this word even meant, just as I first heard about the “gender equality” that the training was about. Before that, violence against women, psychological pressure on them and early marriage of children was a common story for me in my village. If they told me that when you grow up and turn 18, then you should get married or become a teacher, I thought it was completely normal.

After the first training, when I saw so many strong women in one space, with many problems, many difficulties and challenges, I discovered that the problem is not in me, but in the society in which we live.
Rather, the problem is in the conditions in which people are born, grow up, live under stereotypes, and then these stereotypes become a normal tradition for them.

I learned a lot while interacting with these women: firstly, that I can choose my profession independently; The second is that if I don’t want to get married at 18, I can not get married; The third is that I can live where I want, and most importantly: even though I am a representative of an ethnic minority, it does not mean anything, because I am a citizen of Georgia, born and raised here, therefore, I have all the rights and obligations that an ordinary Georgian has. Then I came to Tbilisi and continued my active life here.

What is Bothering Us in My Region?

The first problem is unemployment. People emigrate from many cities and regions of Georgia, and in many cases, the emigrants are women. Here, in Javakheti, we have a massive labor migration of men to Russia. These people were born in the Soviet Union, they speak Russian, they don’t know English, they don’t know Georgian… Against this background, they choose Russia because that’s how it was, their fathers behaved like that, and now it’s the norm for them.

Years ago, many people decided to get Armenian citizenship, which would allow them to work in Russia for 1 year instead of 3 months. However, then new regulations were introduced and it turned out that a citizen of Georgia could not be a citizen of two countries at the same time – they had to give up one of them. Most of them refused Georgian citizenship, because otherwise they would not be able to find employment.

However, after some time, people’s attitudes changed: many learned Georgian and decided that they could find employment in their homeland. Many are already retired and want to return to their village and live here. But if they want to regain their citizenship, they have to pass the language and history exams. These exams are not easy for them: they are old people, they have been in Russia all their lives, before that there was a Soviet Union, Georgian was not taught as it is today… therefore, they cannot pass these exams and get citizenship. In addition, the cost of passing the exam is also high: it costs 500 GEL at the moment. 500 GEL is not a small amount for those people who work in our enemy state from morning till night.

During the elections, everyone comes to this region, they promise that this problem will definitely be solved, but it has not been solved for years.

We also have the problem of infrastructure, roads, transport, kindergartens. There are about 32 villages in Ninotsminda, however, according to my information, only 12 villages have kindergartens. It is also a problem that there is no municipal transport between the city and the village, and the taxi costs 40-50 GEL due to the bad condition of the roads.

Due to the activities in Russia, some people in Javakheti think that it is our friendly country, because they go there and receive money from there. However, this is not the case for young people, which makes me very happy. Most of them donate to Tbilisi, the statistics show that.
It is very clear that the attitude and mood of young people towards Georgia has changed a lot. Many young Armenians understand the fact that Russia is an occupier.

Almost Everyone Has a Desire to Learn the Language

We often hear that these people don’t want to learn Georgian and that’s why they don’t; They do not recognize that they live in Georgia, they do not respect Georgians, etc. I have never heard such an attitude from any of my friends living in Javakheti or Kvemo Kartli that “we don’t study Georgian because we don’t love Georgia” or “we have another homeland and want to go somewhere else”. If a person wants to leave, they will get up and leave: why should they put up with so much abuse and bullying?

Now, it is true that we have good Georgian language specialists in many schools, but it was not like that at the time. I seem to have started learning Georgian from the third grade, however, since our teacher did not even know the language at an intermediate level, we did not feel like learning anything on our own.

Now things have changed. If we come to the region, we will see that young people already have a desire to learn, because we are good examples for them: those of us who came to Tbilisi have a specialty and we work with this specialty. However, in terms of the quality of education, this problem still exists because, for example, we do not have good textbooks. In addition, only some villages have a kindergarten, but in the kindergartens, children learn the alphabet and individual words.

A few months ago I was in a meeting with elderly people, mostly women. There were 40-50 year old women who have many problems and challenges. Nevertheless, at the end of the meeting, they told me that they were going to a Georgian language lesson. Maybe they don’t need Georgian at all: they are in a region where only Armenians live, and they don’t intend to come to Tbilisi, although they want to know the language in order to be full-fledged citizens.

On the other hand, the state doesn’t want to do that, because it’s good when you go and tell [citizens], you have to color this in the elections, you have to choose this, and they don’t have the opposite opinion, they can’t say the opposite, because they don’t have the ability to do it: they don’t know what’s going on In the capital, they are not informed, they receive information from Russian channels, etc.

Vakho Kareli / Aprili Media

Russian Law: the State as a Barrier

Unfortunately, the state does not want to solve these problems. The non-governmental sector has been working on this for years: it started implementing many projects, started thinking about the integration of these regions and people, and did a lot for it.

Through non-formal education, many young people have become active. Thanks to the non-governmental sector, they chose the path of Georgia and the European Union, not Russia. The sector has been working to raise awareness for years; carried out information campaigns; helped farmers; helped women start businesses; It helped citizens to develop a number of skills…  The worst thing is that the government creates artificial barriers in this process.

For a long time now, we have had to prove to a part of the people and to the people in power that we, the non-governmental sector, are not agents and we are working to ensure that if we did not have the kind of childhood we wanted, we should at least create all the conditions for our children and new generations to to live in an equal, developed, humane society.

However, according to the Russian law, the government prevents us from doing all this, probably because it is afraid of something. Perhaps, when there are few problems, the cost is also less. And when we, young people, talk about these problems and demand their solution, of course, the efforts, costs, and resources from the state should be greater. Perhaps they don’t want to allocate these resources, I don’t know. You can think of many arguments why they treat us like this, but I still don’t fully understand.

It is also bad that these people are easily managed and if you tell them that the non-governmental sector is bad and corrupt, they still believe those who are in power. They think that all these benefits that they received in these years come from the government and not from the non-governmental sector. It’s partly the sector’s fault, because for years it didn’t talk about what it was doing; It did not say that this was done by me and not by the government, and we received this money not from the government, but from the European Union…

Every time something was done, it had to be in Armenian, Azerbaijani languages, it had to be published in the local media… It had to be done from our side, but we didn’t know then that we would face such a challenge.

If There Is No More Non-Governmental Sector

The non-governmental sector worked on women’s empowerment, human rights, many different topics and directions. If there is no such sector and there are no people who will take care of our rights, very bad times will come, especially for women. Women have now started to talk about the facts of violence, to make decisions on their own… After that, we will not have the luxury of that and we will again find ourselves in complete isolation. We will not have information on who to turn to in case of a problem, and there will be no agency to help us.

Unfortunately, I do not hope that the government will have the will to solve these problems by itself and fill the void. It works on the contrary that we do not and cannot speak out loud.

My friends and I also have a non-governmental organization “Youth for Democratic Changes”. Within the framework of this organization, we worked mainly with young people in Samtskhe-Javakheti, on their activation and strengthening. However, our work was also stopped in the light of this law, because we did not want to register [in the “Register of Agents”]. We look forward to what the future holds and how we may or may not continue to operate.

The state does not want a critically thinking society; A society that has free will and is able to speak loudly about the problems in its region, city, community. When they noticed that the non-governmental sector is working well in this community and people slowly began to speak out about their problems, the state decided to stop whatever steps it had been taking until now, and also to stop the work of the non-governmental organizations.

Elections

As you know, elections were held on October 26, in which the Georgian Dream received a lot of votes in our regions — Samtskhe-Javakheti, Bolnisi, Marneuli, Gardabani. The biggest percentages were from here. This caused great aggression in the society, they started cursing and mocking these people; This despite the fact that we know very well how the elections were held in a number of regions and cities.

I was also very sad when I saw these numbers. I also had a moment of disappointment with my people because I did not expect such a result. I often have contact with these people, I have visited all the villages, I have relations with almost all of them, and I have heard from none of them that they are satisfied with the existing reality. When you say that you don’t have water, gas, transport, work in the village… I don’t think that the Georgian dream could get such big votes.

There are already many facts about how the Georgian Dream received these votes. However, when it comes to Javakheti and other regions, they do not talk about falsification and say that they are uneducated people, they should take them to Armenia, etc. All this affects the community very badly.

Many people wonder how the Dream got such votes. Most of the men are not here, but the votes have been given. In many villages there are no people, or there are only one or two families and instead of 150 families they have received votes.

People are not the only ones to blame for all this. Maybe there were people in specific villages who were under control and pressure, but to generalize and say that the result that happened is only their fault is wrong.

Blaming things on the community is also wrong from the side of the opposition. Some people from the opposition have contact with me. I didn’t receive an offer from anyone to come to the region, meet people, or you tell me what problems you have… I often had to meet specific subjects of the opposition or the ruling party within the framework of projects. When I talked about the problems, they kept blaming each other, and they also said, you don’t speak loudly. However, here I am, speaking loudly and saying that we have these problems, we have a lack of information; I say that our people don’t know you and if they don’t know who you are, what number you are under, what program and offers you have, why should they choose you?

Vakho Kareli / Aprili Media

I personally received offers from the opposition to be on the party list for these elections. However, there were some unrealistic proposals: neither I nor my fellow villager, friend or other were on the outgoing lists. When you offer something like this to a person, first of all, you need to know personally why you want to have this person on your list; Know them, know what their reputation is in their area, what their opportunities are… if you just see one of their posts, then you directly ask them, and if they refuse, you just ask, well, do you know someone else, of course, there is a doubt, That this person is not very important to you.

Finally, there is a feeling that these people are neither important to the government nor to the opposition parties.

Future

Despite so many negatives, one small positive was that we all united against the Russian law. Representatives of different communities, we were all together on the street during the spring rallies. We still have the same situation and I am sure that we will reach a bigger scale, we will all be together again, because this law applies to all of us: some of us have non-governmental organizations, some of us are worried about specific problems in the community, which we will soon no longer have the opportunity and right to work on; Some of us have plans abroad, but we don’t know how we will arrive in EU countries soon…

I can’t tell you that I am very optimistic and I am sure that everything will be fine. I was also optimistic about the elections, but we got completely different results. Therefore, I cannot say anything about what will happen now.

However, I am sure that we must fight to the end and bring this matter to an end. I believe that the majority do not want Russian law, friendship with Russia and the loss of what we have achieved. I am also sure that the new generation is a generation that, whatever it may be, will not stop halfway and will not go back.