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The Public Defender Requests the Chief Prosecutor to Investigate Detention Fact of the Workers on Strike from the Hercules Factory

September 20, 2011

Based on Paragraph C of Article 21 of the Law of Georgia on the Public Defender of Georgia, the Public Defender has addressed the Prosecutor General of Georgia with a recommendation to launch investigation into the actions carried out by law enforcers on September 13 and 15, 2011, during the workers’ protest in Kutaisi, and to study the facts of hindering workers from holding the protest, dispersal of the protesters, and their detention by law enforcement officers.
 
The Public Defender of Georgia has studied the fact of dispersal of workers’ strike in the area adjacent to the Hercules metallurgic factory in Kutaisi. Representatives of the Public Defender took explanatory notes from the protest participants themselves, a representative of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association who provided legal assistance for the workers on strike, and the President of the Trade Union of Metallurgy, Mining and Chemical Industry Workers of Georgia, Tamaz Dolaberidze. In order to study the circumstances of the case better, the Public Defender’s representatives tried to meet the administration of the Hercules factory and obtain their explanatory notes on the aforementioned incident, but the administration refused to meet with them and give them explanatory notes.
 
The explanatory notes that the representatives obtained make it clear that the employees of the factory went on strike with the demand to improve the hard working conditions in the factory. Several of them resorted to the most extreme form of protest – a hunger strike. The strike involved several incidents in which the rights of the strikers were violated.
 
In particular, on September 13, 2011, during the protest, the protest participants set up a tent. A few minutes after the tent was set up, officers of the law enforcement body came to the protest site. They demanded that the protest participants remove the tent. The law enforcers took the tent apart and put it in a police car. Later, in 10-15 minutes, the law enforcers returned the tent to its owners. After the aforementioned incident, the strike went on, though, as the strikers explain, they didn’t try to set up the tent again.
 
In accordance with the explanatory notes given to the Public Defender and the footage disseminated by news outlets, the strikers didn’t violate the requirements established by the Law of Georgia on Meetings and Manifestations either during the protest or when they were setting up the tent.
 
As for the events of September 15, 2011, according to the explanatory notes given to the Public Defender, at about 21:30, about 30 crews of the Patrol Police came to the site of the protest. The police officers demanded that the protest disperse and detained a part of the protest participants. According to the explanatory note of the lawyer of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association, Revaz Topuria, he, together with Tamaz Dolaberidze, searched for the detainees in the Kutaisi Temporary Detention Isolator and different police stations for several hours, though he was only able to meet them after they had been released. According to the explanatory notes of the lawyers and the protest participants, the protest participants spent several hours in the Kutaisi City Division of the MIA where they were made to write assurances that they would not continue to take part in the strike and go back to work. Otherwise, they would be held responsible in the manner prescribed by law. It should also be mentioned that only three of the detained protest participants agreed to give an explanatory note to the Public Defender of Georgia, on the condition that their identity would remain confidential, while the others only confirmed the aforementioned information orally.  
 
According to the explanatory notes at our disposal, the law enforcers didn’t explain to the protest participants why they were detained either when they were detained or afterwards. At the same time, apart from the so-called assurances, no legal documents were drawn up while they were held in the police building.

www.ombudsman.ge

 


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