Temur Basilia’s Letter to the Editorial Office of the Humanrights.ge

Mr. Editor, I am Temur Basilia and I am writing to you about the article “Temur Basilia Was Arrested in the USA for the Violation of Immigration Law, which was published on the www.humanrights.ge  on February 5, 2010 (see article); English version of the same article was published on the English version of your website.

In accordance to the abovementioned article, “Temur Basilia was arrested in the USA for having breached the immigration law.” First of all, I would like to underscore that I have never breached any law or rules either in USA or elsewhere, neither in Georgia. And I have never been arrested anywhere, neither in USA.

Georgian governmental officials spread disinformation about my detention in USA through the government-controlled media sources. Apparently, several independent and respectful editions, like you are, also published this incorrect information without checking its reliability.

As for the criminal prosecution against me, launched by the Georgian authority and the judgment of the Georgian “independent” and “fair” court, it is nothing more than a method for my politically motivated persecution.

The US Immigration Court agreed that I was politically persecuted, discussed my case on May 26, 2011 and granted status of a political refugees. Various foreign and Georgian media sources have already spread information about the court decision.

See the information on:

 http://www.voanews.com/georgian/news/----georgia-124228999.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20110616/bs_prweb/prweb8578019
http://georgiamediacentre.com/category/tags/temur_basilia

I kindly request you to remove the incorrect information from both Georgian and English versions of your website.

Thank you in advance,

Sincerely,
Temur Basilia

Reply from the Editor-in-Chief of humanrights.ge

In reply to the letter of Temur Basilia, we would like to clarify that the Human Rights Center’s online newspaper– www.humanrights.ge works in accordance to the principles of free media and journalistic standards. On February 5, 2010 we published information spread by the Georgian independent news agency “Interpresnews”: “Temur Basilia Was Arrested in USA for the Violation of Immigration Law.” We cannot agree with Mr. Temur, who alleges that “Interpresnews”, with whom the Human Rights Center has been cooperating for years, is a “Georgian government controlled media source.” We trust and publish information published by this news agency without hesitation.

www.humanrights.ge publishes information spread by various news sources, including Interpresnews, but only those media sources are responsible for the validity of the information. Consequently, the addressee of Mr. Temur’s “kind request” is Interpresnews, not us.

We would like to note, that more than one year has passed since February 5, 2010 and Mr. Temur Basilia has not responded to the information spread by Interpresnews so far. If he had appealed to us, we would have published his appeal to the society regarding the incorrect information on our website. www.humanrights.ge never deletes news or articles from its website. So, we will have the news from the Interpresnews about Temur Basilia’s detention in USA in our archive.

As for the decision of the US Immigration Court to grant political refugee status to Temur Basilia, it is also interesting topic for us and the www.humanrights.ge has already published article of the Voice of America about it.

Editor-in-chief of the www.humanrights.ge Aleko Tskitishvili