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HRW addresses to the President of Georgia

April 1, 2005

March 17, 2005

President Mikheil Saakashvili
Republic of Georgia
State Chancellery
7 Ingorkova Street
Tbilisi 380034
Georgia

Via facsimile: 995 32 998887

Dear President Saakashvili,

We are writing to you today to express our concern about harassment and pressure on Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights (FPPHR), a prominent human rights nongovernmental organization that has played an important role in encouraging the observance of human rights and promoting a more open and accountable government in Georgia since 1996. One of the main areas of FPPHR’s work is in the field of torture prevention, and we are concerned about recent moves by the government that impinge on this work, including by blocking access for the group to places of detention and attempting to suspend the television broadcasts of anti-torture community announcements that it has developed.

Since the end of 2001, FPPHR’s torture prevention work in Georgia was effected through actively monitoring places of detention and exposing abuses by law enforcement officials that it documented through these visits. FPPHR had been a member of the Independent Council of Public Oversight of the Ministry of Justice and was therefore authorized to visit places of detention controlled by the Ministry of Justice. In April 2004, the Council was disbanded, and no other body was put in place. However, according to Nana Kakabadze, the head of FPPHR, Ministry of Justice officials in places of detention continued to allow access for the members of her organization until June 2004. At that time, the authorities blocked further access to these facilities for Kakabadze and her colleagues, following her meeting in the prison hospital with Sulkhan Molashvili, a detainee, and Kakabadze's public allegations about his torture in the Ministry of Internal Affairs headquarters. When Kakabadze and her colleagues attempted to visit Ministry of Justice places of detention, officials subsequently refused to allow them in.

We were pleased to learn that the Georgian government has since reestablished a system of monitoring places of detention, including members of nongovernmental organizations as monitors, but were surprised and disappointed that the FPPHR, one of the most active organizations in this field, has not been included as a participant.

Another government attempt to restrict the work against torture carried out by FPPHR occurred in December, when the State Anti Monopoly Service of Georgia wrote to the television stations Imedi and Kavkasia asking them to suspend their broadcasts of community service announcements against police torture sponsored by the European Commission and FPPHR. According to Kakabadze, the community announcements had been broadcast on several private channels since February 2004.

The request to suspend these broadcasts arose from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which wrote in a letter to the State Anti Monopoly Service that the announcements “discredit the profession of the police and interfere with reforms of the system, which are attempting to establish justice and order in the country.” The letter also stated that the announcements could attract a penalty because they did not comply with the law on advertisements and requested that they be taken off the air. In response to the request of the State Anti Monopoly Service, both channels suspended the broadcast of the announcements.

The next week representatives of the State Anti Monopoly Service and the Ministry of Interior met with representatives of the European Commission. According to Kakabadze, the authorities requested that the advertisements be changed so that images of police uniforms, the Ministry of Interior building, and electric shock equipment be removed. After repeatedly requesting written confirmation of the ban on the advertisements, the FPPHR received a letter from the State Anti Monopoly Service in late January 2005, stating that it was not banning the advertisements, but just recommending to the channels not to show them. Kakabadze told Human Rights Watch that after the FPPHR showed this letter to the television stations in early February, they began to show the anti-torture community announcement again. While there was a positive outcome in this case, the incident prompted concern about undue government intervention.

On several occasions, members of FPPHR have also been harassed by unknown persons as well as law enforcement officials. This began in late 2003, when unknown persons made a series of threatening telephone calls to Nana Kakabadze, including threats to the safety of her daughter. According to Kakabadze, these threatening telephone calls stopped by March 2004, after she spoke publicly about them.

On May 4, two police officers beat Levan Shakhvadze, the head of the Rustavi branch of FPPHR, in the street in Rustavi. They demanded that he stop working on cases involving police abuse. He made a formal complaint about the incident to the police, demanding that a criminal case be opened. However, he later withdrew his complaint after receiving further threats. 

In mid-December, unknown callers made a series of threatening and abusive telephone calls to the FPPHR office. These continued over a period of approximately ten days.

As you know, it is a duty of all governments to protect human rights defenders, as laid out in the Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Further, the government of Georgia has made it clear that it wishes to develop Georgia into a robust democracy and the constructive criticism of nongovernmental organizations, such as Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights, is essential to that process.


We therefore urge your government to ensure that Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights is able to work unhindered, including through visits to detention facilities. We also ask that you send a strong signal that your government will not tolerate threats of reprisals for all human rights work.

We thank you for your attention to this letter and look forward to further constructive dialog.

Yours sincerely,

Rachel Denber
Acting Executive Director
Europe and Central Asia division

cc:

Ambassador Roy Stephen Reeve, Head of OSCE Mission to Georgia 

Torben Holtze, Head of Delegation, Delegation of European Commission to Georgia and Armenia

Matyas Eörsi, Co-rapporteur on Georgia of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly's Monitoring Committee

Evgeni Kirilov, Co-rapporteur on Georgia of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly's Monitoring Committee

 

 

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