24.02.2009 11:08 | Tragedy of South Ossetia

Tragedy of South Ossetia. Testimony of Witnesses:

Valieva Valentine Parmenovna, born in 1952, school teacher

Hetagurovo Village, Ostaeva Street, 12

There were three of us in the house – me, my son and my sister-in-law, Mamieva Tamara Nikolaevna.

At that night, on August, 7-8, the shell exploded with such a force, that the wall was punched by it and the house lighted up at once. In the horror we rushed to the different sides, we did not know where to go and my sister-in-law ran out to the street. She remained there.

The ladder lighted up and has fallen off and she left under its fragments, we couldn’t pull her out - we could not even reach a threshold of the house, such was a shooting there. In the past, on Soviet time Tamara worked as a school teacher of Russian in the Georgian village for a long time.

We ran inside, rushed from a corner to a corner. Here the second shell hit the house with such a noise that we were simply dumbfounded in horror. We ran in the most distant room, have thrown the TV out of a corner and hided there and only then we felt a smell of a smoke and realized that the house was burning. At that time the third shell has flown above the house, hit the grapes and destroyed everything, the huge craters just remained. We already had no place to disappear, so we have broken out a window and jumped out through it and barefoot ran to the basement of our neighbors. My son had a phone in his hand, but he has dropped it in a hurry. His passport burned down too with money together and my sister-in-law documents too... It left nothing at all; we had no time even to take out the needles.

The neighbors, to whom we have run, were very frightened too. We ran to the other basement and I glanced at my house the last time. Suddenly I remembered that there was a gas cylinder in the house and I shouted everybody not to come close to it. The shell hit my neighbor - Mamiev too, it beheaded him. I was running, I did not remember myself. We reached a cellar of our other neighbors which had a car and began to plead with them to take us to Dzhava. He took us and we spent the nigh in Dzhava, we did not sleep, the son did not wish to leave for Northern Ossetia: “my father remained there...” – he said. 

In the afternoon we decided to leave to Vladikavkaz, but suddenly the plane strike the road, began to bomb... (She cries). Near to us Russians had been destroyed by bombing... Two Russian tanks have burned down. From that place we went to a tunnel, the son did not wish to go further, as he said, all our relatives, the father have remained there... And we have sat down there, we could not leave... We thought about how could we leave the sister-in-law? But how could we return?

Then we have learned that that very day Tamara’s brother together with the neighbor, our namesake, Ahsar Mamiev made the way to our house in Hetagurovo, have pulled her out and transferred in order she would not burn down. But all the same her body burned down below a waist. In general, they together with the neighbor took her body out in a court yard, rolled it up in a bed sheet and left on a couch – they were going to bury it, when the shooting would be a bit calmer. In the evening the brother came there again, he wanted to bury, but such strong shooting has begun, that it didn’t come to anything. He hardly rescued, jumping from one ditch to another...

At night he went through a wood on foot, as he says, bullets whistled above his head. He spent the night in Zarsky. He spent four days barefoot, without food, without water... In village Zar one man took him on a lorry to the customs. Then he has reached customs... (She cries). Someone gave him money for the trip... At last, when he reached us, I was so glad to see him... We began to search for our relatives (She cries). The late was buried by our relatives on the third day. And we came today, sent the guys to a cemetery to dig a tomb so that to rebury her body and to give a wake for her in Ossetian traditions. My mother is a refugee from Borzhomsky district too, they were banished from there in 1991, two times Georgians have deprived us of the home and everything that had been acquired for all years.

Let the Lord will not forgive Georgia for it! Let the Ossetian people’s troubles and blood will for ever remain on them! Let them experience everything that we experienced, let them realize how we felt... (Cries) There are eleven funerals in our village today – people rebury the bodies from kitchen gardens to a cemetery. It is a funeral of my pupil – Ahsar Tomaev. He was such a good boy. He was killed together with his friend at the entrance to the village.  It was all the same for them, whom to kill: men, women, elders or children, all the same.

My colleague’s mother-in-law Nastya Dzhioeva refused to leave the house. She was killed on a threshold. The old man, Efim Bekoev, who worked as deputy head in our school, was killed in his house, the killers destroyed his house. I can not remember everybody, so many people died... I don’t know about all of them, now it’s the  first time I went out to the street since the day we left. The entire street is destroyed, they shot the houses by tanks, drove into them, they even drove along my kitchen garden.

And after all these – they were drinking, as the pigs, near the awful remains of burned Tamara. They are pigs, I can not say differently. And I can not call them the “fascists” names, the new term is necessary for them, something worse than fascism...

And if now they do not recognize that it was genocide, it means, there are no normal, reasonable people in the world any more!