Op-ed: 'Spanish shame' and a 19 y.o.'s 'Abkhazia is Georgia' video

Recently a 19-year-old girl in Abkhazia girl posted a video on Tik-Tok in which she says ‘Abkhazia is Georgia’. For this, 19-year-old Alena Tania and her parents were summoned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Later, a new video appeared in which the girl made a public apology.

Alena Tania, in addition to the video, posted on the page several photos where she poses in a police uniform. In doing this, she hardly pursued any political or other goals, but the whole story had great resonance in Abkhaz society.

On social media, the girl was criticized, many accused her of betrayal and proposed deporting her family to Georgia.

The next day, the girl and her parents were summoned to the Ministry of the Interior. The footage of the pre-investigation interrogation was shown on state television and posted on social media.

It turned out that the girl’s father was a veteran of the 1992-93 Georgian-Abkhaz war, her parents did not know anything about the video. She herself says that a certain person, whose name she does not name, asked her to post a video with the phrase “Abkhazia is Georgia”.

Comment

Inal Khashig, editor of JAMnews in Abkhazia and editor of Chegemskaya Pravda

It seems to me that the situation that 19-year-old Alena Tania has gotten herself into (another word is hard for me to find) is one that you would not wish on your worst enemy.

To all appearances, the problem is that she has no views either on Georgia or even on Abkhazia itself, in which she has been living without a break for all these years. I doubt that she will immediately remember the name of the current president, Aslan Bzhania.

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The girl just wanted to catch some hype on social media. Some of them put on their personal page half-naked bodies against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, others flaunt in expensive branded clothes or fly in dad’s Lexus at a red traffic light.

Alena also tried to surprise the crowds in her own way, based on the opportunities that she had. She arranged a photo session in the uniform of a police lieutenant, which she borrowed from a neighbor. But very few people paid attention to this, even in the same militia.

And then she appeared with her video, in which she says ‘Abkhazia is Georgia’, and got to the point.

One has only to look at the degree of confusion of the girl and her parents, whom the state machine has exposed as outcasts, and everything will be clear.

The authorities gladly saluted in front of all this angry public on social media, which demanded they be evicted, burnt, shoot. Everyone was loudly shown that “the enemy will not pass, and we are watching for this.”

The authorities do not have much interest in such simple families, where people, at best, live from paycheck to paycheck. And here, like that right away – with a pre-investigation check by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and a separate news item on the state channel.

Such representations did not suit the officials who were “spotted” on a similar “Georgian” topic. After all, they can give a hat. And here you can.

What does a normal person feel about such a “whistle dance”? “Spanish” shame. When you are ashamed not of yourself, but of others.

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