Radio Liberty begins broadcast in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia breakaway regions of Georgia today. The Georgian producers say that on November 2, the first one-hour long programme of Radio Liberty’ s local branch Echo of the Caucasus will be broadcast. The audio of the programme will be available on the radio website, which will be opened today. A team of five reporters work for the Echo of the Caucasus [Ekho Kavkaza] in Prague.
The editors say that parts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, including Gali district, will be able to listen to the programmes of Radio Liberty on the frequency of Radio Green Wave.
(Source: Georgian Times)
Related story:
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 13:19
And nobody there cares for shortwave anymore it seems. I’ve been told that they are on air 0400-0500 UT on 5885 kHz (Lampertheim) and 15205 kHz (Sri Lanka) plus 1600-1700 UT on 9725 and 11605 kHz (both Lampertheim). Or has this been terminated before it even started?
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 17:11
The headline looks a bit strange. Tskhinvali is a Georgian name for S.Ossetian capital, Tskhinval. Not long before the war Georgia downgraded S.Ossetia to ‘Tshkinvali Region.’ Note that RL uses ‘South Ossetia.’
SW should be on but who knows. The announced ‘frequencies in the evening’ are 9525 and 9780. No morning broadcast was mentioned in RL Russian report dated Oct. 20. Acc. to it, some people in Georgian gov were upset with new station because they see it as a veiled recognition of the republics’ independence.
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 17:16
Thanks SRG. I have changed the headline and text. I was hoping for a press release from Radio Liberty, but so far nothing to update the one they issued on 7 October. By the way, can you explain why the English news story I quoted had the definite article in several places where it wasn’t needed. For instance, it said ‘the Prague’ in the original. Is there some peculiarity of Georgian that causes this translation?.
on Nov 3rd, 2009 at 15:08
http://www.rferl.org/Howtolisten.aspx also shows a slot of 1700-1800 UT (given as 2100-2200 local time) and 9525 plus 9780 kHz as shortwave frequencies. No repeat in the morning. And besides shortwave only the Hotbird satellite channel, no FM affiliates in Georgia (outside either South Ossetia and Abkhazia, of course) show up.
Also no trace of the announced website or just pages related to the radio show. I can not find anything at rferl.org. Searching for “Ekho Kavkaza” was futile, too.
Btw, it appears that the Georgian side indeed puts an emphasis on having South Ossetia and Abkhazia linguistically treated as mere “regions”, at least German journalists got somewhat nasty phone calls after referring to them as “republics”. And I’m not surprised about them being not satisfied with RFE/RL when noting the caption of a photo that illustrates the press release from October, mentioning “Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia” (isn’t Tskhinvali the Russian name while in Georgian it is Tsxinval?).
on Nov 3rd, 2009 at 15:22
And I should have read elsewhere before posting here…
It’s http://www.ekhokavkaza.com
on Nov 3rd, 2009 at 15:36
Site: http://www.ekhokavkaza.com The service is announced on the air as Radio Ekho Kavkaza. So it’s a new station that borrows its name from RL local competitor #1 Radio Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow).
The geo-spellings that end with “i” are Georgian. No “i” means that they are local - Ossetian or Abkhaz. Russia formally switched to local spellings.
The station consistently refers to S.Ossetia and Abkhazia as self-proclaimed republics. Which is a mouthful in Russian and sounds somewhat Orwellian when repeated again and again within a short time frame. Other than that the programs seem to be quite balanced for now.
on Nov 3rd, 2009 at 21:18
Not “break-away provinces”? Quite remarkable.
But still one has to ask why they need such speech regulations and consider themselfes unable to simply talk about Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Do they not know how much such Orwellian speak reminds on the old days, when it was, as an example, indispensable to refer to Poland / Hungaria / Bulgaria / Romania as “the people’s republic of xyz”?
And so far it was my impression that proper Georgian versions need an x, like Soxum instead of Sukhumi.