Termites are still feasting at the black spot in the rose garden where Koba Jashashvili, an ethnic Georgian farmer, bled to death after being shot by a masked gunman in the Georgian village of Tkviave near the South Ossetian border a month ago.

He is one of many ethnic Georgians who died at the hands of unidentified armed militia who terrorised the flat hinterlands of South Ossetia after Russia invaded the former Soviet republic.