Ministry of Refugees Refused to Cooperate with Studio “Re”

The Ministry of IDPs from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees of Georgia refused to cooperate with the Studio “Re”. They clarified their refusal by extra critical and biased programs of the Studio.

Head of the Studio “Re” Mamuka Kuparadze spread special statement on the issue.

“Association “Studio Re” hosts weekly discussion on current urgent topics in the country which are aired by the TV-Company “Maestro”. Throughout many ears, our programs became a kind of TV-window for the civil society where active part of our society has opportunity to express their personal opinion. Working on the discussion, we cooperate with various organizations, among them with governmental institutions.

Unfortunately, “strange alienation” started between our studio and the Ministry of IDPs from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees about four months ago. In fact, they ceased cooperation with us. Two months ago we invited Valery Kopaleishvili, representative of the Ministry to participate in our program.  Despite his readiness to participate in it, Mr. Kopaleishvili did not come according to the decision of the Ministry’s Press Service.  Representative of the Press Center told us only Kopaleishvili could clarify the situation but he was not in Tbilisi at that moment.

Afterwards, we asked the head of the Ministry’s Press Center Eka Gulua to arrange our meeting with the Deputy Minister to hear his comments on our questions. Ms. Eka Gulua, who is a former journalist, asked us to send letter by mail. After we sent her the video-recording of the Discussion together with our questions, she replied in the evening of the same day that our programs are too critical and biased and the Ministry did not want to continue cooperation with us.

Similar approach to the facts is completely unacceptable for us and we cannot share their position because their representative could not attend the program because of their prohibition. The program was about improvement of IDPs living conditions. Representatives of various institutions working on IDP problems participated in the discussion. They were, member of the Abkhazia’s Supreme Council, IDPs and human rights organizations working on IDP issues.

Afterwards, we invited the representative of the Ministry to speak about IDP problem in the framework of the EU project. The Ministry again refused to send representative to our program. Several days ago, the Ministry did not allow us to cover the project of the Danish Refugee Council which aims to assist the Ministry.

My colleague journalists often complain that the Studio Re is not the only organization who is treated in similar way by the Ministry of IDPs.
In October the Transparency International - Georgia specifically recommended the Ministry to more effectively cooperate with critical media sources.  The Transparency International’s report states that the Ministry approaches media as an instrument of self-advertisement and not as mechanism of neutral sharing of information.

“The example of the Studio Re shows that the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from Occupied Territories of Georgia, Accommodation and Refugees did not consider the recommendation and did not improve attitude towards media.  They in fact fully refused to cooperate with us, while only several months ago the Ministry officials were coming to speak in our studio without any problem.

This topic is very painful for us as a program prepared without participation of one of the sides may not be complete and this will be a loss for the viewers,” Association Studio Re statement reads.

We do hope the Ministry will change its approach to us and we will have opportunity to prepare valuable and timely programs on IDP issues.