Two killed as Georgia destroys Soviet-era memorial

THE GOVERNMENT of Georgia has killed at least two people and infuriated Russia by blowing up a second World War memorial to make way for a new parliament building in the provincial town of Kutaisi.

An eight-year-old girl and her mother were killed by debris hurled from an explosion to raze the 46m (151ft) concrete and bronze monument.

Some local media reports said the debris was thrown into the victims’ home, killing them and injuring four others. Other reports suggested those killed had wandered close to the explosion, and that one other person was hurt.

Officials said “security norms” had been violated, but sabotage and terrorism had been ruled out. The demolition work was being carried out by a private contractor.

Georgia’s leaders ordered diggers to start tearing down the monument last week to allow a new national parliament to be built in Kutaisi, as part of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s plans to encourage development and investment outside the nation’s capital, Tbilisi.

But the demolition of the Soviet-era monument has infuriated Russia and Mr Saakashvili’s domestic critics, who called it the latest demonstration of his impetuous and autocratic streak.

Some 300,000 Georgians died fighting for the Soviet Red Army against Hitler’s Germany.

“The decision to dismantle this memorial without asking the people and without asking the author of this memorial is a very good example of how our leadership ignores public opinion,” said Georgy Akhvlediani of Georgia’s Christian Democratic party.

Mr Saakashvili’s move inevitably raised the hackles of Russia, which fought a brief war with Georgia last year and has recognised the independence of two of the country’s separatist pro-Moscow regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“The Georgian government has carried out an act of state vandalism, insulting the feelings of any civilised person,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“This is an attempt to erase from memory Georgia’s hundreds of thousands of sons and daughters, who stood shoulder to shoulder with their brother nations, who selflessly fought on the front and gave their lives.”

The spat echoes the dispute between Russia and Estonia in April 2007, when the Baltic state relocated a Soviet war memorial in its capital, Tallinn. Protests from Moscow coincided with riots by ethnic Russians living in Estonia and a spate of cyber-attacks on major Estonian websites that were widely blamed on hackers acting on Moscow’s orders.