Journalists to be No Longer Engaged into Monitoring of Penitentiary System

Maya Tsiklauri, media.ge 

On January 1, 2013 so called monitoring team of penitentiary systems is due to end its operation. Moreover, provided the team continues activities, based on the decision reached by different organizations, journalists and acting lawyers will be no longer engaged.

The website of the Ministry of Corrections and Legal Assistance has posted a statement according to which 51 authorized persons of the monitoring team, including journalists, are granted the right to enter all penitentiary establishments during working and non-working hours until January 31, 2013. Thus far the team members have been notified of the same and former Minister of Corrections and Legal Assistance Giorgi Tugushi and his advisor Giorgi Mshvenieradze confirm the aforementioned.

The new management at the Ministry clarifies that according to Giorgi Tugushi’s order #149 the validity of the monitoring team members expires on January 1, 2013.

“According to the head of our legal department several drafts have been proposed. One of them stipulated the end of January, but the final version agreed upon was January 1. The final decision was reflected in the order issued by the Minister at the time,” says Sophio Japaridze, Depuoty Minister of Corrections and Legal Assistance.

Debates are on over the extension of monitoring into the penitentiary system – through the way of working out an alternative monitoring mechanism. But within the framework of this mechanism journalists will be no longer engaged in the monitoring.

On December 22-23 UNDP, under the initiative of the Ministry of Corrections and Legal Assistance, organized a meeting over the issue. The representatives of domestic and international NGOs, including Georgian Young Lawyers Association, were present at the event.

The meeting discussed the following topics: the organizational structure of the alterative monitoring mechanism, the agency it is going to subordinate to, who will be entitled to take part, what criteria should be applied to select monitoring participants, the way of reporting and the like.

According to the decision reached at the meeting neither journalists nor lawyers will be taking part in the monitoring. The decision was approved through the majority of votes.

“The reason for the exclusion of journalists was their likely professional interest. S/he will be always trying to retrieve news to cover. The process will be more oriented on reporting scandalous new rather than delivering information about violation to the Ministry for further response,” said Sophio Japaridze.

Reporting to Media.Ge journalist Gela Mtivlishvili of the monitoring team pointed out that he has never misused this advantage and never retrieved an exclusive from the penitentiary system.                                                        

“There have been some cases of retrieving exclusive material from prisons. But mostly I used to post on Facebook the data on various offenses or prisoners’ conditions. Journalists have been most active in the monitoring process. We would deliver data to the Ministry, department or spoke to the agency representatives and the information delivered by us worked well,” Gela Mtivlishvili said.

He, together with other journalists, consented to being set certain rules and liabilities. But unfortunately the Ministry and NGOs refused to examine this issue. This far Media.Ge has failed to obtain case-related information from the GYLA representative.

So called monitoring team was set up in September 2012 following the release of the prisoner abuse video.

The final decision, according to Sophio Japaridze, has not been reached yet but in agreement with civil organizations the alternative monitoring mechanism will be including the members, based on the Minister’s order, recruited with the help of the coordination council or public defender to provide recommendations for the nominees.

“We haven’t decided yet which one is going to ultimately stay out of two,” said Japaridze.