Humanitarian Aid and Ethnic Cleansing

Three bits of disturbing news. Prayers to those caught in the cross-fire.

1.
(from my friend Hans)
"... a Ukrainian journalist, whom I just talked to, today observed a
(presumably) Ossetian gunman taking a car from UNHCR, a few
metres from Russian tanks close to Gori.
The Russian soldiers watched and just laughed.



2.
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/13/russia19620.htm

However, moving back from Tskhinvali to Java on the evening of August
13, Human Rights Watch researchers saw, for the second day running,
houses that were ablaze in several Georgian villages. They had clearly
just been torched. One counterintelligence officer of the South Ossetian
forces claimed to Human Rights Watch that: “We burned these houses. We
want to make sure that they [the Georgians] can’t come back, because if
they do come back, this will be a Georgian enclave again and this should
not happen.”



3.
AFP August 14, 2008 Thursday 4:20 PM GMT
http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/georgiaconflict

Georgian relief operation hampered as aid workers ambushed
A truce between Russia and Georgia has failed to open up the
conflict zone to much-needed emergency supplies, aid agencies and
EU officials said Thursday, as UN staff were held up by armed
gunmen.

The United Nations workers were ambushed in the Georgian city of
Gori before having their vehicles stolen, an official said,
adding that the area was not yet considered safe enough for aid
workers to operate in.

Robert Watkins, UN resident coordinator for Georgia, told AFP two
UN-marked cars were taken by "paramilitary" gunmen after security
officials doing a safety assessment there were stopped at
gunpoint.