“The OSCE Mission did not care that the residents of Tskhinval are being killed”

Testimony of the witness Lyudmila Djioeva, the resident of Vladikavkaz:

“I was visiting my friend when the massed shelling of Tskhinval from the Georgian side started. There was no cellar in the house. We knew that the there had been a sole house in the Pushkin street where we could hide and we all rushed there. But it was unsafe there as the ceiling of the cellar was not concrete.

One of the neighbors said that there’s one building on the same street that would not be bombed by the Georgians. It was the building of the Tskhinval Office of the OSCE Mission. Furthermore there was a reinforced cellar under the whole building. So in the morning of 8 August we rushed there.

The door was opened by the man in helmet and the bullet-proof vest. We asked him to let us in. Any normal man should have understood that we needed immediate help. In response he only said that he should ask the permission of the superiors. He did not let us into the building despite the heavy shelling of the town. We had been waiting at the gate for 10 minutes even one second was enough to be killed. He did not appear any more and we had to come back. OSCE Mission showed utter indifference to our lives.