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Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, today tried to brush off serious American criticism of the country's human rights record by saying that the US State Department "critcises all countries" and pointing to the more positive comments in the report, released yesterday.

The report listed eleven types of "main human rights abuses" in Georgia:

• least one suspected death due to excessive use of force by law enforcement officers,
• politically motivated kidnappings and assaults,
• poor prison conditions,
• abuse of prisoners, including juveniles,
• arbitrary arrest and detention,
• politically motivated imprisonment,
• excessive use of force to disperse demonstrations,
• pressure that appeared politically motivated on owners of property,
• lack of due process,
• government pressure on the judiciary, and
• senior-level corruption in the government

It also listed several other types of abuse including a dimunition of media freedom, restrictions on media freedom and attacks on people and organisations because of their sexual orientation.

The high level of anxiety in the government about the report is shown by the fact that it has hardly received any media coverage - with the state-controlled and financed national media effectively imposing a black-out of the report, so therefore merely ramming home its points about a lack of media freedom and objective reporting. (The video here is from Maestro, a cable-television station in Tbilisi).