Cultural workers from Georgia, Taiwan and Hungary are being awarded the Goethe Medal by Germany for their courage and commitment but not without controversy.
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14 Feb in 11:10 Eurasianet
Iveri Melashvili never expected to be famous. Nearing retirement after a modest government career in cartography, the 62-year-old’s name has suddenly made national headlines and led TV broadcasts – vilified as a traitor or honored as a political martyr. As Eurasianet reports, he stands accused of literally selling out his homeland, 14 square kilometers of it. In the authorities’ telling, he deliberately gave bad cartographic advice to the government that all but resulted in the handover of a little bit of the country’s territory to Azerbaijan. They have charged him with treason.
“This is like a bad dream,” Melashvili told Eurasianet while sitting at his desk, maps strewn in front of him. “Everything is so absurd and terrible that I don’t even know where to start.” After spending four months in jail with another cartographer colleague, Natalia Ilychova, Melashvili was released on bail on January 28. The verdict in the case is still pen