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Demonstration In Support of Political Prisoners in Front of Parliament

November 3, 2010
Salome Achba

On October 30 – the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners – the Human Rights Center (HRIDC) organized a protest demonstration in front of the parliament of Georgia. The human rights defenders, family members of political prisoners and politicians joined the demonstration. Their main request was the immediate release of political prisoners who serve their terms in the detention settings of Georgia. They expressed solidarity with the political prisoners and spoke about the difficult situation in this field in Georgia.

“The situation is getting worse day-by-day. New people have been added to the already existing list of political prisoners. We can already use this term for the member of the National Forum Zaza Chakvetadze and Sozar Subari’s (former public defender and leader of the opposition political party “Georgian Party”) brother – Vakhtang Subeliani. Apparently, there was no legal ground for their imprisonment. It is a very negative trend and unfortunately, nothing has changed for the better,” said the representative of the Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights Gela Nikolaishvili.

The representative of the Democratic Movement for the United Georgia- Temur Lomsadze, who has extensive working experience in the field of human rights, also joined the demonstration. He was a deputy public defender of Georgia for many years; for some time he even acted as interim public defender. Lomsadze said that Georgia has never faced such a difficult situation before. “Today, we have a lot of political prisoners who were granted with this status by various international organizations. Despite that, the situation is very complicated and nothing has changed for the better. I think, first of all, we – human rights defenders – have to take serious measures to prevent persecution on political grounds in this country.”

Elene Maghradze - wife of military expert Vakhtang Maisaia – who was declared a political prisoner by human rights organizations - also attended the demonstration. “We, family members of the political prisoner, had to come and express our solidarity with other political prisoners. It is a negative reality when we have more than 50 political prisoners in Georgia today. The country and the government, who claims to be democratic, should not have so many political prisoners,” she said.

Post-Soviet states have been celebrating the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners on October 30 since 1991. Many states celebrate the day by staging protests, demonstrations, planning assemblies and by expressing their solidarity with the people who were persecuted on political grounds during the communist regime. Many of them left the problem of political prisoners in the past. However, this problem is still very urgent in Georgia. Part of society still celebrates the day, which was founded during Soviet authoritarianism, by staging protests to request the freedom of political prisoners in Georgia.

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