The Georgian chapter of the international writers' association PEN has stepped up its campaign for international recognistion of what it describes as a "bute violation of the right of expression and free speech" after what it says was the arrest of three poets for reading their own and Walt Whitman's verses at a protest against the naming of one of Tbilisi's major streets in honour of George W Bush.

The three - Shota Gagarin, Aleksi Chigvinadze and Irakli Kakabadze - do not deny that they were involved in defacing the over-sized street sign that features a picture of George Bush: though that is not an arrestable offence in Georgian law and, in any case, they say the police were not present when it took place so could not have judged who was responsible.

Instead the three were charged and convicted under article 173 of the Georgian criminal code - which forbids serious resistance to the police, such as resisting arrest. However the whole event was filmed and it is absolutely clear the three co-operated fully with their arrest. The police have also claimed the three disobeyed a police order not to block traffic but again the three respond that the video shows they did not block traffic and merely read their poems while standing on a traffic island.

The PEN statement reads:

Below is a comment posted about the Economist's article on Georgia. As it is anonymous (or rather written under what appears to be an assumed name) we cannot verify its contents, but it certainly accords with what many others have told us about the business climate in Georgia today:

We have written of the decline of Sighnaghi before.

In an extraordinary statement Georgia's interior minister Vano Merabishvili has admitted to the Economist  that there is neither rule of law nor judicial independence in Georgia and that, instead, the outcome of legal processes are decided by government.

The Economist calls his statement: "all the more dangerous for being persuasive"

Merabishvili's comment - that the legal system is too weak to left to decide the law and therefore it falls on government to dispense "justice" comes towards a lengthy profile piece which first praises the achievements of the Rose Revolution:

Today Georgia has reinvented itself as the star of the Caucasus. It is less corrupt than most former Soviet republics and one of the easiest places in the world to do business, according to the World Bank. Its liberalised economy has weathered Russian embargoes, and the state held together during the war with Russia. Its police do not take bribes and electricity is no longer a luxury. Most important, people are no longer surprised by such success. The biggest transformation is in their minds.

But then goes on to warn of how what some have called the "post modern authoritarianism" of Saakashvili is now damaging Georgia's prospects:

On paper Georgia has all the institutions proper to a democracy. In practice few of them enjoy real power. Parliament, dominated by Mr Saakashvili’s United National Movement party, has become little more than a rubber stamp. The police and judiciary are beholden to politicians. Key decisions are taken by a circle of insiders whose influence often extends far beyond their job titles. Democratic procedure is often sacrificed to expediency—catastrophically so in the case of Mr Saakashvili’s decision two years ago to attack South Ossetia with heavy artillery fire, giving Russia the excuse it needed to invade ...

...Mr Saakashvili is more a moderniser than a democrat. Yet in order for his reforms to become irreversible, Georgia needs strong democratic institutions; above all an independent judiciary and the rule of law. Mr Merabishvili argues that these cannot be simply decreed; they need to become entrenched tradition, recognised by Georgian society as a whole. So for the time being, he believes, it is the government that is best equipped to administer justice. This argument is all the more dangerous for being persuasive.

Too much personal power is concentrated in the hands of Mr Saakashvili and Mr Merabishvili, his feared interior minister. That is ominous for a country where power has not been transferred peacefully since independence. A set of proposed constitutional changes would shift more power to parliament and its nominated prime minister. But Mr Saakashvili’s critics say that discussion of the proposed reforms has been limited. They fear that the president will follow the example of Vladimir Putin and stay on as prime minister when his term expires in 2013. If he does, he risks destroying his own legacy.
 

Anger at the treatment of refugees - who have faced a government campaign to deport them from Tbilisi - and from street traders, who have seen the police attempt to drive them into closed and regulated markets, boiled over today outside the parliament building in central Tbilisi.

Police attempted to arrest protestors - a move the protestors say was itself unlawful as they had sought the appropriate permissions, only for the protestors to resist and a large brawl to break out.

The events appear to be unreported - so far - by leading TV channel Rustavi 2, but Maestro have broadcaste extensive coverage (see video).

After a period of relative social peace in the capital the scenes are a reminder of the Saakashvili government's ability to upset its own apple cart very quickly.

Refugees, who have often been living in Tbilisi for close to two decades following the civil wars of the early 1990s, are being ejected from public;y-owned buildings with just five days notice as the government attempts to return momentum to its privatisation programmem given its fiscal crisis.

Street traders are subject to the same pressures: few if any of them pay tax on unregulated street trading and the government is trying to end that. The traders counter that they are often in the direst poverty and simply cannot afford to pay the fees needed to hold down a pitch in a regulated market place.

August is traditionally a quiet time in Georgia and Georgian politics but whether the current round of disturbances represents a move towards a wider social confontation or just a temporary scuffle remains to be seen.

The authorities could back down but that means retreating on the economic front. But the lack of heated rhetoric from Saakashvili about how the protestors are spies or dupes of the Kremlin - his standard response to any criticism - suggests the authorities are not yet willing to press home their monopoly of force to settle the situation either.

Opposition poliician - and former Saakashvili minister - Goga Khaindrava has told the BBC's Russian service that Mikheil Saakashvili is on a mission to destroy Georgian nationhood through the promotion of homosexuality:

The goal is to break this absolutely rock-solid part of the Georgian mentality and Georgian identity - Christian morality. Against it is the explicit overt assault from the government, whose mission to break the Christian morality in Georgian society

Evidence for this bizarre claim is not supplied beyond his report that Nina Kobalia, a tourism official in Batumi and sister of the controversial economy minister Vera Kobalia, is alleged to have encouraged gay tourists to come to the Black Sea resort.

Georgia remains one of the most homophobic societies in Europe and religious influence over sexual morality remains strong - whilst at the same time prostitution is legal and widespread.

In the last year conflict over homosexuality has never been far from the surface of Georgian public life: although elements of the opposition accuse the government of promoting sexual anarchy, the state has also used homophobic blackmail to attack media freedom while the row over the controversial satirical book Saidumlo Siroba ("Holy Crap"), which featured descriptions of the narrator's incestuous and homosexual fantasies, climaxed in a punch up on live TV between free speech proponents and members of the "People's Orthodox Movement", a body which has adopted many of the trappings of a fascist movement.

Now the fight is over a supposed proposal for a gay pride parade in Batumi. Nobody quoted by the BBC who might organise such an event (as opposed to protest against it) actually says they are planning to hold one. Though, understandably enough, they are not rushing to deny themselves the same rights as gay people elsewhere in Europe. Paata Burchuladze of the Inclusive Foundation tells the BBC:

A gay pride parade is not an end in itself, a gay parade is a method to achieve the goal - to attract public attention to the problems of people who can not be solved in the country. The main target of a gay pride parade would be those in power. To hold a parade in secret, with the support of those in power- it's just an amazing idea, and this will never happen.