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:

Abnti-racist campaigners gather outside the presidential palace in Tbilisi to protest at Mikheil Saakashvili's comments about "niggers" and "savages".

Photograph copyright (c) Mart Wegman, 2010. All rights are reserved. Used with permission.

The public broadcaster, which has recently been seen as taking a turn towards serious journalistic standards and ethics, looks as though it has returned to being nothing more than a propaganda tool of the Saakashvili regime after it failed to report yesterday's disturbances in central Tbilisi.

The two other national channels - Rustavi 2 and Imedi - also ignored the events: which saw large-scale scuffling outside the parliament, the arrest of opposition activists and the escape from cutody of one of the arrested. But no one seriously expects these channels to do anything than follow the orders of the regime.

The public broadcaster, however, has recently taken advice from the BBC on how to run a news room and has seen non-partisan figures commited to quality journalism join its governing board (which, however, has no editorial role). During the May elections it was the public broadcaster - as opposed to the two national commercial channels - that hosted a debate between mayoral candidates which for the first time put the ruling party on the same footing as the opposition.

Now the elections are over and many western observers have given the conclusion Saakashvili wanted - that he may not be perfect but he's cleaning up his act - the signs are that the regime is once more persuing a path of radicalisation: partly driven by its dire financial straits and the collapse of its libertarian vision of Georgia's future as the country depends on western grants and loans.

Business investors privately say that extortion in the form of raids bty the tax police have increased, refugees in Tbilis are being evicted and faced with a choice between destitution in the capital or merely poverty in the countryside as the regime looks to privatise their former homes and, as yesterday's events suggest, the screw of political repression is being once more slowly tightened.

The Saakashvili regime has repeatedly proved itself to be its own worst enemy and plainly hasn't even learnt the lesson that turning TV stations into propaganda outlets in the long term will only serve to undermine social trust and respect for democracy and the rule of law.

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.

Despite growing anger at the treatment of refugees from the Abkhazian and South Ossetian conflicts - some of whom have been living in Tbilisi for 15 or more years but are now being forceably deported back to western Georgia - the regime has signalled its unwillingness to compromise by evicting yet more people today.

State owned property in Tbilisi is a prime target for privatisation for the cash-strapped Saakashvili regime and the sense amongst many refugees is that they are being thrown out of their homes to ensure that the government can maximise its receipts from property sales.

There were some evictions last winter but these essentially stopped before the 30 May municipal elections. With these out of the way there seems to be no barrier to continued deportations.