Aleksi Bezhanishvili
Public Defender Giorgi Tughushi claims the first part of the 2009 report of Public Defender was prepared after he came in office. Giorgi Tughushi stated about it at the session of the Parliamentary Commission of Human Rights when his report was discussed.
According to Tughushi, he and his colleagues feel insulted when people say the report was not prepared by them and previous ombudsman worked on it.
Giorgi Tughushi said although the report is about the facts that occurred during Sozar Subari was in office, not a single chapter was prepared during previous ombudsman.
“The report we have submitted to the parliament is result of 24-hour-work of mine and my colleagues,” said Tughushi.
As for the report of the second part of 2008 which remained undiscussed at the parliament, Giorgi Tughushi spoke about it with journalists before the session started in the committee. He said the parliament shall decide this problem and nobody should rebuke him about it.
Giorgi Tughushi spoke about the violation during the manifestations in the first half of 2009.
According to Tughushi monitoring groups were created at the Public Defender’s Office who studied those violations that were done by both law enforcement officers and demonstrators.
Giorgi Tughushi paid particular attention to the representative of the public defender who was physically assaulted on the rally on May 6 though he was wearing a special uniform of the observer. Public Defender requests to convict every law enforcement officer who physically assaulted and insulted the representative of the Public Defender on May 6 2009. Tughushi said these facts blatantly breached the law and hinders the efficient activities of the public defender’s office.
Public Defender pays particular attention to the usage of illegal weapon by law enforcement officers to disperse demonstrators on May 6 in front of the police department. More precisely, they used rubber and plastic bullets and demonstrators received serious injuries. One of them even lost an eye.
According to Giorgi Tughushi, using similar bullets contradicted the law. Usage of nonlethal – rubber and plastic bullets was legalized only after amendments were introduced to the Law on Police on July 17, 2009.
Besides that, Giorgi Tughushi criticized those amendments to the law. He thinks although new regulation of the right on assembly and manifestation was necessary by the parliament, the legislative amendments adopted on July 17 contradicted both the Constitution of Georgia and Human Rights Charter.
Giorgi Tughushi spoke about other facts of excessive use of power and authority. He said similar facts more frequently occur in western Georgia; so this tendency should be seriously studied and we should pay particular attention to western regions of the country.
Giorgi Tughushi recommends to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take urgent measures to eradicate similar facts and adequately react on the violations.
Prepared Based on the Information Reported by Interpressnews
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