Saakashvili Tells Europeans to Remember Russia-Built Dividing Lines in Georgia

Europe will not be able “to sleep calmly,” as long as Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain divided from rest of Georgia with Russian-built barbed wires, President Saakashvili said on November 8.

Saakashvili compared Russian troops stationed in Georgia’s breakaway regions to “dinosaurs” and said “these dinosaurs, with their dinosaurian imagination and dinosaurian small brains” were building barbed wires across the administrative borders hindering thousands of IDP families to return back to their houses.

“Today, when Europe celebrates 20th anniversary of collapse of the Berlin Wall… barbed wire is now stretching here in Georgia,” he said.

“Here we have a border between liberty and non-liberty; it is neither administrative nor other type of border; here is an occupation line; I never refer to it as an administrative or a political border – this is an occupation line… This is a line between humanity and inhumanity, which is capable to detain children; this is border between past and future and the future belongs to Georgia and to liberty.”

“I want all the European politicians – majority of whom of course stood by us – to remember about their Wall and to remember these barbed wires, any time when speaking about good neighborly relations [with Russia] or about developing relations with the occupant of this land,” he said.

Saakashvili was speaking at a ceremony of handing over houses to 100 families displaced from their villages in South Ossetia as a result of the August war. The houses were constructed with the funding of Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA). Visiting Turkish State Minister, Faruk Çelik, was also present at the ceremony.

“I will never forget what Turkey has done for us… We have a neighbor who destroys and a neighbor who constructs,” Saakashvili said. “In the past our relations with Turkey were not always easy and I am sure time will go by and Russia will also learn this lessen if it wants to become modern and successful country like Turkey is today.”

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