Tbilisi and Tskaltubo, Georgia – In 1993, Venera Meshveliani was one among more than 300 people who were held hostage by Russian soldiers for around three weeks in Abkhazia, a breakaway region in northwestern Georgia that borders Russia.
“I can never forget the sound of soldiers’ trampling feet and the foul, damp smell of the school building we were held hostage in. Everything I witnessed and experienced there was genocide,” said Meshveliani, an 86-year-old ethnic Georgian who hails from the Abkhazian village of Akhaldaba.
