Maia Pelishvili – Immigrants for Georgia

QvemoQartli.ge is launching a new column “Immigrants for Georgia.” We will introduce you to the assessments of active citizens who have left Georgia. We will ask what they think about the current situation and what solutions they see.

The first respondent of this column is former police officer Maia Felishvili. Our editorial team has known Maia for years. While working in Georgia, we have seen her commitment to human rights more than once. Maia was the “policewoman” to whom we addressed women who had experienced violence, and we knew that this was the police officer who would truly protect them.

– M A I A F E L I S H V I L I –

I am Maia Felishvili, 50 years old, a former police officer. I have been in emigration in Italy since 2021. Before leaving Georgia, I worked in units subordinate to the Kvemo Kartli Police Department for the last 14 years. I worked in the field of violence against women and crimes committed by and against minors as a certified investigator.

After emigrating, I met many women who had arrived here at different times, although most of them had a similar reason for leaving their families and emigrating, most of them had escaped from Georgia due to two main problems: economic hardship or an abusive spouse.

For some time, various people continued to contact me on social networks. I will specify some acquaintances, some strangers, who asked for help for themselves or others, help to protect themselves from domestic violence.

Soon I was convinced that I would be able to help many women again and created an online platform on the social network called “Gaia”, which brings together several specialists from legal and medical profiles to help women who are already emigrating. During this time, we have helped many immigrant women again, and I am very proud of that.

However, in recent months, against the backdrop of the ongoing political crisis in Georgia, it has been difficult to concentrate on anything else and I am completely absorbed in current events. During the pre-election period, I actively helped people living in emigration register for the electoral roll, and also attended meetings with politicians through various online platforms. Thanks to the efforts of Georgians living in emigration, it became clear who the majority of the population is choosing.

However, it should be noted that a certain part of the population, unfortunately, sees Georgia’s European integration in the wrong context and cannot grasp the full essence of what European integration means. Of course, the fear that someone will take away our language, or faith, or abolish our traditions is a complete delusion and part of Russian propaganda, but this requires a reasoned explanation. For that part of society that for certain reasons is a victim of the propaganda machine, and this is not at all surprising, after all, we have been living under Russian pressure for more than two hundred years. The special services of this country have been spreading their propaganda messages not only in Georgia, but throughout the world for many millennia.

And we forget from time to time that the fight for peace is necessary even in peacetime, and that relaxing attention to a neighbor like Russia is completely unacceptable.

I mean that the opposition’s agenda of forgiveness for years did not include deep and thorough communication with the broad masses of the population, and the electorate was always remembered by everyone only as an election, as a rule.

And this has led us to a complete crisis. Now the only way out is in peaceful protest, because we want European integration through a democratic path, and I will explain here that we need European integration only and only to unite under a strong and democratic umbrella, and not because we prefer another country to our homeland, in any way. European integration will give us guarantees that the country’s development will not deviate from the democratic path and that we will not find ourselves alone in hostilities, if there is a threat of this.

Unfortunately, the number of people emigrating has increased significantly in the last year, and the reason for this is precisely the fear that society has due to the political crisis in Georgia.

Families are emigrating to Europe; if before, only one member came, now entire families are leaving Georgia with their children. This means that, at best, they will not return to their homeland for several decades, or at all. I do not think this is peace; the population of an empty and demographically backward country will be halved in a few decades, and well, think about it, who benefits from this?! We can already see clearly that among the owners of private property in Georgia, there are many owners of Russian nationality. We are losing our country, and if we don’t stop it now, due to some invented fears, we will make an irreparable mistake.

The fears that the pro-Russian government propagandists instill in us are invented. It is simply necessary to think and look back in the past to correctly understand the information. When did we know that people of different orientations in Russia were quite a normal occurrence and who, we are not taught this, in history we had the first husband of Queen Tamar, remember who he was?! Russian. So if someone is afraid that a different orientation will be postponed, then this would have happened to us centuries ago. Also in favor of religion, our history is the best example of how no one has been able to take away our religion for centuries and now who are we afraid of, Europe will take away our religion?! This is unthinkable for a Georgian person. As for language, in the European Union everyone speaks their own language and no one has ever forced anyone to speak another language, as the Russians have always done. As for traditions, on the contrary, they show great interest in our traditions and in general, joining the European Union does not mean moving to live in someone else’s family, we remain Georgians in Georgia and this is the same axiom as it has been for centuries. So, boldly, forward to Europe, let’s not give up our country to Russia!

QvemoQartli.ge