©Mike Carroccetto

Medina Gusalti, named Ossetia's Woman of the Year in 2006 for her work in developing awareness for the Ossetian language and culture, is visiting Barrhaven while her land is being savagely attacked by Georgian soldiers.

Madina Gusalti is a journalist from South Ossetia who arrived in Barrhaven, Ontario, Canada on the afternoon of Fri., Aug. 8 to visit a classmate from university in Germany. Just hours before she arrived here, Georgian soldiers invaded her homeland, destroying homes and murdering innocent women, children and the elderly. Among the 2,000 slaughtered were her uncle and two cousins, killed by a Georgian soldier who found them and tossed a grenade into their hiding space. It is the third time that South Ossetia has faced an ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Georgian government, but it is a story that the western media has either ignored or denied. This is her story - a story of her people and their culture, their hope, their horrors, and the genocide that the world refuses to see.

I look at the moon every night, and I wonder. This moon that I look at every night while I am in Barrhaven is the same moon that my people in South Ossetia look at. Here, it is a beautiful moon, surrounded by stars. I see airplanes flying below it on their way to the Ottawa airport. But to the people in my homeland, this same moon is looked upon differently. It is a moon of fear. It is a moon that tells us it is night time - a time to be afraid of what may happen in the night. Ossetians do not have time to study the moon's beauty, but they wonder if they will see the moon tomorrow night.

Like there is another side of the moon, there is another side to the story that has been unreported by the western media. This is the story that 500 million Eastern Europeans know, but one that the media has kept away from Canadians and Americans. The story you have heard is that Russia invaded and occupies a sovereign nation. The truth is both far more simple, and far more complex. This is the story of my family and my land.

They died without reason in their beds, on the night of August 7. On the eve of the Beijing Olympics, while the world waited to celebrate the opening ceremonies in front of their television screens, the first of hundreds of artillery shells smashed through their ceilings, incinerating children and parents in their beds. They destroyed furniture, family photographs, heirlooms - everything that could burn, along with the overall sliver of security that the people believed they finally had. The shells rained down without warning. There was no time to escape or defend. By morning, 2,000 Ossetian people lay dead.

Two days earlier, these people sat in front of their televisions and watched the president of Georgia professing his love of South Ossetian people, promising them continued safety in the territory they reside. This message was supposed to be the commencement of peaceful negotiations between Georgia and South Ossetia regarding peace in the region. This message proved to be a deceptive ploy, a communiqué unobserved by western watchers, facilitating the surprise evening attack that left 2,000 South Ossetians dead.

The heavily-equipped Georgian army entered the town of Tshinvali, executing an operation that had been planned since 2006, code named "free field". The secret operation was uncovered in documents from a small group of Georgian soldiers, recently captured by Ossetian civilians. The military operation called for the quick and efficient destruction of all homes and their inhabitants; predominantly children, women and the elderly. My grandfather escaped the city the morning of August 8, awoken by the Russian Army who had entered the region to protect citizens, like my grandfather, from the invading Georgians. It was not an invasion by the Russians, it was a defensive action that was made in the nick of time. 'No people, no problem' was already the longstanding motto in Georgian politics, made famous by the most famous Georgian in history, Stalin. I am guessing these words are still relevant in Georgia. The Georgian military orders were clear - no one was to remain.

My grandfather was the lucky one. He survived. That same night of Aug. 7, I lost my uncle and both of his daughters - my cousins. They were murdered by Georgian soldiers in their home in the middle of the night, less than 24 hours after the Georgian President had promised peace.

In 1992, the parents of my uncle were murdered by soldiers in Georgia for no other reason than because they were South Ossetian. They were killed in their home. They were Ossetian by blood, but lived in Georgia in the home their family had owned and lived in for three generations. They were shot at point blank range, executed in front of their children and two grandchildren both under five years of age. They were all told, before the trigger was pulled, to watch closely, "This is what we do to Ossetians in Georgia".

Over the years, many of my family members have fled the South for the North. One evening in 1991, my aunt (my mother's sister) and her two daughters fled Georgia to North-Ossetia in the backseat of an old Ziguli brand car, hidden under potatoes, motionless, and barely able to breathe. The car was driven by an ethnic Georgian, who passed through numerous military checkpoints under the guise of transporting the produce to a distant market. The Georgian man risked his life for my family. He saved their lives.

During the war from 1989-92, South Ossetia lost almost half of its population. Thousands of people had to leave their homes and thousands of refugees travelled through the Caucasus Mountains to North Ossetia for refuge. Tshinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, still has not recovered. Even after 16 years, there remains no municipal water system and electricity is barely intermittent, coming from fuel powered generators. Food is available, however, unfortunately food exists for the same reason that the region was so easily attacked by the Georgian army two weeks ago - all the males are gone. Forced to leave for employment, they earn money as migrant workers in Russia and other CIS regions and send money and food back from North Ossetia.

I want you to know that the civilian people of Georgia don't want war. They are simple people, who in that sense are no different from the Ossetian people. I hold no grudge or hate toward them. I tell this story as I lived it. This is a war of politics and economics; a war of geography and egos. The people who are caught in the middle are the ones who suffer. When innocent people die, resentful people are born. This is why the conflict must be resolved while a few still remain on both sides who have still not been completely jaded by war. Peace must be built for both sides.

Three genocides have already been committed against the Ossetians by the Georgian government. Why does this remain unreported? Why hasn't the Ossetian story been heard?

The Russian army did not invade Georgia. They entered South Ossetia to force out the invading Georgians who were in the process of killing the remaining Ossetian people. If the Russian army had not arrived within 12 hours of Georgia entering South Ossetia, the 2,000 dead would clearly have been more, and the culture and people erased from the region forever. Later, the Georgian army admitted that they never anticipated the Russians to arrive so quickly, having estimated their undefended attack could last for days before any resistance would appear.

The population of South Ossetia is roughly 80,000. Obviously, a population of this size commands a very small audience on the world stage; therefore its voice is rarely heard. The territory is surrounded by Georgian land. The territory is not sovereign, nor does it form part of a supportive nation. It remains alone. The people hold no citizenship to their land. Over time, they have gradually been granted Russian passports even though the land is not Russian. Without these papers, they remain hostages to their land. Imagine living in a land where you can''t leave because, legally, your citizenship does not exist. Ninety percent of the South Ossetian people hold Russian passports, and as a result, Russia considers it their responsibility to defend these people against aggression, which is where this conflict stands.

It is a personal shame that the world hears only about my land in connection with conflict and war. It is a pity that in today's time of open international politics, with hundreds upon hundreds of international organizations, who are tasked to grapple with these issues, that truths still remain untold and voiceless people continue to suffer.

The world turns on its televisions, they see smoke, rubble, tanks and soldiers generally in barely identifiable military fatigues. The newscaster flashes unpronounceable names and cities, but the story is never completely explained. The connections and backgrounds behind the conflict and the people who have died, will die, and those who must carry their memory, are an afterthought.

It is a pity that in the time when the free press defends freedom, the truth and story of these people's lives still remains untold.

This is the picture of my land - South Ossetia - that you have come to learn. What I want you to remember is that the story of these people continues to be untold and, therefore, continues to suffer in the dark. The country's struggle has now been lost in the international political battle between Russia and Georgia, a battle which receives far more attention than the 80,000 voiceless souls who live within a territorial line that has become the background for the news stories you see and hear. For the last 80 years, South Ossetian people have lived for peace, freedom and autonomy. They have again paid a very high price for their hopes - they paid with the lives of their children, mothers and grandparents.

History of Ossetia

Ossetia is the country of the Ossetians and lies in the Caucasus, nestled between the Caspian and Black Seas. Today, the country is divided politically into two different areas, bordering on each other's regions and belonging to the different states. North Ossetia-Alania is a part of Russia, South Ossetia is an internationally-notapproved separate republic in Georgia. The Ossetians are descendants of Alans and the Sarmatian people, an old Iranian nomadic group which moved approximately 5,000 years ago from Persia in the Caucasus.

The culture of Ossetians is unique. The language of Ossetian is threatened with extinction and is, hence, a sign for the today's history and above all a unique spring for the linguists. South Ossetia has an old and unique culture, and it even has its own religion. The Georgian government wants to eradicate the culture and the language, refusing to allow the language into schools. People even have to change the spelling of their surnames to a Georgian name to get jobs. The South Ossetians are proud of their language and culture, and want to preserve it. They do not want to forget that King Arthur was a Scythian warrior, or that Alans left, everywhere in Europe, their tracks of sophisticated culture, inspiring scientists over and over again. This identity and culture is what the Ossetians have tried always to preserve.

Georgia-Ossetic conflict

At the end of the 20th century, the breakdown of the communist regime in Eastern Europe created several bloody and unforgotten ethnic conflicts, one of these remains the Georgian-Ossetian war.

The autonomous status of South Ossetia was granted in 1923 in the Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic. Near the end of the 1980s, Abkhazian and Ossetic nationalists started to seek more autonomy. The communist regime, particularly that of the Soviet Union, has consistently tried to manage and accommodate the national and ethnic differences between the people of region. Now free from communist doctrine, the Georgians, although having originally granted Ossetia autonomy, have continued to remove this right of free rule and cultural independence of the Ossentian people. This explains the surpression of the Ossetian culture and language, as explained above.

The Georgians brought instability into the territory in order to drive the people out of their land. They persecuted the Ossetians through looting, killing of cattle, burning of crops, and have instilled fear in the people through extortion.

From 1918-21, the first suppression of the Ossentian people began. It was at this time that Ossetia's national language was first forbidden. The only language to be spoken was Georgian. All Ossetian people were forced to change their names to Georgian names. The people became "guests" in their own land. The houses of Ossetian and Abkhazian people were burned. The Georgian army threw the small children, old people and pregnant women off of cliffs, which are plentiful in this mountainous region. They burned thousands of towns and villages and, within days, 5,500 people were killed. After three weeks, the first purge of South Ossetia left the territory nearly bare. It was at this moment that South Ossetia was granted autonomy in Georgia.

Currently, the Georgian government continues to call itself a democratic sovereign nation, safe for its people and neighbours. Georgia does not call its actions genocide, they call it war. But a war is between two armies, not between an army and a nation of women, children and the elderly, who are killed in their sleep. There are very few men in South Ossetia, as most are away working in Russia.

For several decades, the South Ossetian government has tried to achieve the status of a sovereign state. I, and my people, want no war. We want to live with our neighbours in peace. We want a state where there is no fear of repercussion; where we can live proudly in a country that allows its people to have its history and culture. Never again do we want tears. Never again do we want grief. There is a new hope for peace and freedom, but it is a pity that so many people had to die for this dream.

It's difficult for some people to understand what our people are going through and how we feel. Canada is beautiful, and everybody in your community has been wonderful to me. Canadians are a lot like Ossetians. Our countries are beautiful and our people are friendly. The people I have met are proud to be Canadian, just as we are proud to be Ossetian.

In Canada, however, people can stop and enjoy the beauty of their country. In Ossetia, there is no time to enjoy the beauty of the land. We stay home, and when we go out, we are afraid. We cannot stop to see how beautiful our country is. We just do what we have to do, and then we go home as quickly as possible. The people are angry and upset and afraid. They don't know what the next day will bring. Ossetians are, culturally, a very loud and happy people. In the evening we would celebrate life. There would be guitars being played on the streets and people would be happy and dancing and having fun.

But the biggest difference that I see is with children. In Canada, the children laugh and play and smile. They even cry. In Ossetia, we have a generation of children who cannot be children. They may not understand politics, but they know fear. I want that to stop. I want the children - both Ossetian and Georgian - to have peace and to have hope. More than anything, I want the children to have the same childhood that I had in Ossetia. I want them to laugh and to cry and to smile and to dance. I want them to be children. But that is a dream. Right now, a bigger issue is that women are afraid to even have families. What kind of violent world would we be bringing children into?

And at night, I want them to look up and see the moon, and I want them to feel what I am feeling when I look at it here in Barrhaven.

Madina Gusalti is currently completing her PhD in Politics and Languages at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She is an active member of the NGO, nonpolitical group that promotes cultural understanding within the Caucasus region, as well as the Ossetic and Georgian Diaspora "Alanis".