Modeled war on Imedi-TV
A young woman was glued to the TV screen. A painfully familiar scene was being repeated. Georgian tanks. Saakashvili. The words: intervention, occupation, Russians, Tskhinvali, Tbilisi…
The images of August 2008 emerged in her mind. The infernal days and hours spent in the cellar, the sound of blasts, the Georgian tanks in Tskhinvali, her starving little child.
“A friend of mine called me screaming: ‘watch the Imedi TV channel, the war is starting. I do not comprehend Georgian well. I could not believe what I was hearing. I did not know what to do. My child was already asleep. A shiver went down my spine. My whole body was trembling. After the war my nerves are in awful condition. I started calling my husband and relatives. Nobody was picking up the phone. I was going mad. I got my documents together and started packing.
At last, my husband reached me on the phone and told me that everything was all right and there were no signs of war. I did not believe him. I was hysterical and could not control myself. Then a neighbor of mine rushed in and told me not to worry. She said that everything had been a simulation,” this is what Zarina Pukhaeva, 25-year-old resident of Tskhinvali, remembers. After that she lost consciousness. Later she was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a nervous breakdown.
Nowadays, Georgian television channels are being watched more than before the war. Whoever knows Georgian, tries not to fall behind the domestic political developments in Georgia in order to be ready if a new war breaks out. This is why the fake news report of the Imedi TV caused a great panic in Tskhinvali. The news spread in a matter of seconds in the small town. It is hard to put in words what was happening in Tskhinvali when the Imedi TV’s simulated war report was being broadcast live.
A quiet evening was suddenly turned into chaos when the news program reported the attacks on President Eduard Kokoiti and the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. The report said that the tanks were moving towards Tskhinvali or Gori. So many panicked people were calling each other that the phone connection nearly broke down. The 30-minute news report brought everyone back to August 2008.
“I only had one thought – ‘may this be just a military exercise, may March 13, 2010 not turn into June 22, 1941 for the world.’ I was considering several scenarios in my mind: if USA gets involved, it will be the third world war. As if to strengthen my fears Imedi TV was broadcasting the comments of Barack Obama and foreign ambassadors,” Larisa Tskhovrebova recalls.
When it turned out that the news report was a simulation, everybody asked a question: “who and why did this?” It still is a key topic of discussion in Tskhinvali both in government circles and among ordinary people.
It has been a week now that all kinds of pundits and observers have been struggling to find the answer to this question. The opinion of South Ossetian public is unanimous in that if there is a mention of war in Georgia, it must include South Ossetia as well. Ossetians have been living in relative peace and safety for just one and a half years. This is very little time to overcome fear since they lived in the conditions of war much longer.
Genadi Kokoev, an independent expert from South Ossetia, thinks that apart from a clear propagandist aim, the objective of this fake war report was to test the waters of the idea of a confederation of Georgia, Ossetia and Abkhazia.
“The underlying message of the Imedi TV’s virtual scenario was that the problem of South Ossetian and Georgian people can only be solved if the incumbent leaders of both countries are removed. The report said that if the opposition of the inadequate president Saakashvili in the face of Nino Burjanadze and Zurab Noghaideli came to power, they would not only reconcile the two people but also restore Georgia’s territorial integrity by offering South Ossetia confederative arrangements,” Kokoev said.
“There is a great probability that the objective of those who stand behind this report was first, to present and perhaps warn the public of the likelihood of such developments, second, to undermine the opposition by labeling them “pro-Russian”, and third, to retain a strong anti-Russian sentiment in Georgia. The future will show how effectively the first two objectives were reached. As for Russophobia, it will probably reach an apogee in the Georgian society. In such circumstances, the damage of the rating of the mentioned opposition figures is guaranteed,” he thinks.
The official Tskhinvali was quick to declare that the report of Imedi TV was a provocation against Russia. “Saakashvili is in panic. The only thing he can do is to create hostility between the Georgian and Russian people,” said Boris Chochiev, political representative of the South Ossetian president in the post-conflict regulation issues.
According to the leader of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoiti, this is a political provocation because it allowed Georgia to mobilize additional military forces at the borders of South Ossetia.
“It may have been done simply to work out certain actions regarding South Ossetia,” Kokoiti mentioned.
We can only guess what the aim of the authors of the simulated news report was. What is evident is that this report has further deepened the conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia. Once again, this time virtually Georgia managed to intimidate the Ossetian people. The wounds from the August war have been reopened after Imedi TV’s fake report. For the scared and stressed South Ossetian people the apologies of the TV channel are no consolation. But perhaps we are not even the addressees of the apologies.
The opinions and terminology used in the article belong to the author only and not to “The Liberal” and Heinrich Boell Foundation.