Georgia Hotel Makes Room for the Displaced

TBILISI, Georgia —  For five years, Avtandil Mikava and his son Ramaz have lived in the most prominent hotel in the center of this ancient city. From their beds, they can look down on Republic Square and its statue of David the Builder, the legendary leader who united Georgia in the 12th century.

But unfortunately for them, their beds are outdoors on a balcony--summer and winter. Along with six other members of their family, they have spent almost all of the post-Soviet era living in one small room of the hotel.

Welcome to the Hotel Iveria.

What was once a three-star Intourist hotel overlooking the Kura River is now a refugee camp packed with more than 1,000 people forced to flee the ethnic conflicts that divide modern-day Georgia. The Mikavas--fugitives from the 1992 war in nearby Abkhazia--see little chance of ever returning home.

“I don’t know why and how I’m still alive,” said Avtandil Mikava, 55. “We don’t have any future. We try not to think about it because we don’t have hope anymore.”

The Mikavas are among more than 1.6 million in the Caucasus region forced from their homes over the last decade by ethnic warfare, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says. In Georgia alone, the U.N. estimates, 282,000 refugees have been displaced by ethnic conflicts that began in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union; thousands more have fled Georgia for Russia.

In Tbilisi, the first wave of refugees came to the hotel from the capital itself when rival factions fought over who would rule the country, destroying homes and government buildings near the city center. The second wave arrived in 1992 from the republic of Abkhazia in western Georgia when secessionist Abkhazians drove out the minority ethnic Georgian population in a bid for independence. The conflict remains unresolved.

Many among the hotel refugees are elderly or sick; one-third are children.

“We had to take them in because they were in a terrible predicament,” said Guram Kutidze, 64, manager of the government-run hotel. “Naturally, the hotel has incurred some major losses. We hope they will be able to move out one day and go back to their hometowns, but as of now, we don’t see any end in sight.”

Compared to other refugees in the region, Georgians in the Hotel Iveria are fortunate. Most have bathrooms with running water, and--like the rest of Tbilisi--they have intermittent electricity. Markets are within easy walking distance, and children can attend local schools.

But after five years of uncertainty, many have passed the point of desperation. There are few jobs for them; government stipends are minuscule. Their homes mostly have been destroyed or occupied.

In the last five years, many of the older people have died, and a new generation is being born that knows no other life.

“We had to leave everything and go,” said a weeping Lily Galdava-Kharebeva, 46, a refugee from Abkhazia who lives with her daughter and 16-month-old grandson in one room. “I don’t have any hope we will go back. I don’t really understand how I am going to carry on. Life is over for me.”

Across Republic Square from the former regional KGB headquarters, the Hotel Iveria seems out of place, having taken on the appearance of a high-rise patchwork quilt. Industrious refugees have converted every square inch of the hotel into usable space, scrounging wood scraps and blankets to turn balconies into kitchens, bedrooms and storage areas.

Inside, the carpets are torn, the paint is cracked, and wallpaper is peeling off the walls. Packed as many as 13 to a room, refugees cook on kerosene stoves, wash their dishes in bathrooms and sleep wherever there is a flat surface.

The Mikava family is fortunate to have two balconies--one for a “kitchen” and another for the “bedroom” of the two Mikava men, who sleep under a blanket tent. The kitchen, though, floods during storms.

In Tbilisi, the refugees say, they increasingly face discrimination as their stay wears on: Few employers will hire a refugee. “How are we expected to survive?” asked Alla Rusia, 46, who fled Abkhazia with her daughter and two granddaughters more than five years ago. “No one likes us. Everyone spits on us.”

Paddock was recently on assignment in Tbilisi.