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“For Your and Our Freedom” – Human Rights Defenders Conference in Tbilisi

November 19, 2010
Salome Achba

On November 13 and 14, the Human Rights Center (HRIDC) organized a regional conference with the slogan “For Your and Our Freedom.” The conference was organized in the framework of the EU funded project “South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders” at Sheraton Metekhi Palace. The human rights defenders from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia took part in it. The human rights defenders from Russia were also invited to the conference.

The South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders came into existence in the spring 2009. The South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders unites 30 human rights NGOs in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. They jointly monitor the human rights situation in the countries of the South Caucasus. The Network facilitates safer and enabling environment for the activities of the human rights defenders. The member organizations gather periodically and share their experiences and opinions with each other.

On the first day of the two-day conference, participants spoke about the situation of human rights defenders in the South Caucasus countries and discussed challenges and problems which human rights defenders encounter during their activities. Besides defenders from the South Caucasus region, representatives of international non-governmental organizations also attended the conference.

Representative of the Georgian “Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights” Nana Kakabadze spoke about those obstacles Georgian human rights defenders encounter during their activities. Kakabadze requested assistance from international NGOs. “The only tool for the protection of human rights defenders is the support from non-governmental organizations. The human rights defenders have to work in a very complicated situation in Georgia. We cannot carry out monitoring at detention settings. It is difficult to request public information from governmental institutions. I want to take advantage of this meeting and request the donor organizations to support us because only they can influence the government of Georgia,” said Nana Kakabadze.

The issue of political prisoners was the topic of the second day meeting. Participants discussed the cases of politically motivated persecutions and detentions of people in their respective countries. Documentary of Erling Borgen about Azerbaijani journalist - Einula Fatulaev, who is in prison now, was shown at the conference. As defenders stated, journalist is innocent and the only reason for his detention was his open criticism of the government of Azerbaijan in the newspaper “Real Azerbaijan” whose editor-in-chief he was.

The family members of Vladimer Vakhania –who was declared to be a political prisoner by many human rights organizations – also attended the conference. They made statements at the conference. The sister of Vladimer Vakhania and his attorney Ilia Lomia informed the participants about the essence of the case and stated that Vakhania was imprisoned on political grounds; they requested assistance from the international human rights organizations.

“I wish to inform the assembled society about the hard conditions in which Vakhania has to serve his arbitrary imprisonment. I think, international non-governmental and human rights organizations should have information about it,” said Ilia Lomia.

Georgian human rights defenders stated that there about 60 political prisoners in Georgia.

“The main point is that through this conference we managed to attract the attention of the international community to our problems and to reveal the hard situation in the field of politically grounded imprisonment in our region. I think, in this situation, creation of joint international mechanism is urgently needed. In this way, we will be able to assist political prisoners and guarantee their freedom,” said the representative of the Georgian NGO “Law for People” Zakaria Kutsnashvili.
 
“We spoke about current challenges in the field of human rights in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. We also discussed how to make our activities more effective. The most important is that the human rights defenders had an opportunity to share their experiences at the conference. Unfortunately, we do not often have opportunity to exchange information. So, the conference was extremely important for everybody,” said the executive director of the Human Rights Center Ucha Nanuashvili.

“Similar regional conferences are always very interesting particularly when it deals with human rights. At similar meetings, the human rights defenders have opportunity to exchange opinions, experience and professional problems; we jointly seek instruments to resolve our problems. Our activities always include risk and danger at some extend. So, similar meetings and expression of solidarity with each other is very important,” said the representative of the Georgian Human Rights Priority Lia Mukhashavria.

“I think, because of their large-scale and systemic nature, the problems in the field of human rights and rule of law in our countries can be eradicated only by our joint effort. Throughout these two years we have seen concrete achievements of working as a Network, we assisted human rights defenders at risk and established closer cooperation among human rights defenders and other important groups on national, regional and international levels. However, it is only a beginning. As it was agreed at the conference, strengthening solidarity and coordination, increasing our professionalism and doing more strategic planning ahead should become the leading principles for NGO sector and human rights defenders. This is how we can fight human rights violations more effectively and become a force to which authorities as well as other groups in the society attach importance and account to both nationally and internationally,” Ana Natsvlishvili coordinator of the “South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders” in Georgia, stated.

At the end of the conference, the participants worked out joint strategy for the eradication of urgent problems together.

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