Protests held by IDPs and street traders have been taken to the Presidential Palace, as both groups call on Mikheil Saakshvili to respect their rights. The united groups have escalated their protests, following yesterday’s rally outside Tbilisi City Hall.

According to reports several hundred IDPs are demanding the privatization of their living spaces, as police seek to evict them from a former Soviet military building in the capital. The street traders are appealing to the President to study the issue on ban of street trade and help to solve the problem. Street traders are refusing to enter markets because of the high taxes.

In a recent report Amnesty International slammed the Georgian government for its failure to meet its obligations in caring for people displaced by recent conflicts over the last two decades.

Freedom House, perhaps the world's most respected monitor of political and media freedom, have confirmed their view that Georgia made no overall progress towards democracy in 2009, and lags behind the post-Communist average.

In their "Nations in Transit" report for 2010, the watchdog - founded to oppose the totalitarian states of the 1930s - gives Georgia the same overall "democracy score" in 2009 as in 2008 - itself a significant decline from the previous two years and much worse than before the Rose Revolution of 2003. Indeed the report rates Georgia's electoral processes in 2009 as no better than in 2003 - when electoral fraid led to the ouster of veteran Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze.

Since the Rose Reveolution Georgia's only real improvements have been in corruption and, more marginally, the strength of civil society. in other key categories, such as media freedom and judicial independence the trend has been negative.

Georgia's overall score puts it not just behind the post-Communist average but only fifth in the former Soviet Union - behind Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine.

The report says the sharpest overall decline in the last decade has been in Russia: last year the Georgian state controlled media reported the "Nations in Transit" report as though it were solely about the Russian Federation and ignored its damning conclusions on Georgia.

But as Freedom House's researcher, Professor Davit Aprasidze warns:

The coming year [ie 2010] will show to what extent the Georgian government is willing to implement all of the reforms pronounced by President Saakashvili. The local elections in the spring will test the president’s resolve, as well as measure the ability of opposition parties to build coalitions and conduct rational dialogue with the ruling party. The effectiveness of Georgia’s internal democratic institutions will be an important factor for shaping the country’s international position as well. Failure to show substantial progress will likely further decrease the international community’s interest and involvement in helping to solve Georgia’s problems.

Today, 21 May, has been declared the day of solidarity with political prisoners in Georgia, reports InterPressNews.

A rally will be held, at 5pm, outside parliament and there will also be a protest at the supreme court.

The Georgian authorities deny there are any political prisoners in Georgia but many respected international bodies - such as the International Federation for Human Rights - say otherwise. Georgian deputy foreign minister Giga Bokeria was embarassed last year when, at a joint press conference, the US assistant secretary of state for human rights, Michael Posner publicly contradicted him on the issue of political prisoners - Bokeria said there were none while Posner said he took the issue "seriously".

Despite that clash there has been little sign that the regime was moved to release any political detainees.

Yesterday the European Court of Human Rights heard, in public, the opening arguments in the case brought by murdered bank clerk Sandro Girgvliani's father against Georgia over the role of Georgian high officials in the killing of his son and the Georgian state's subsequent handling of the investigation and court case.

The Sandro Girgvliani case remains an open wound in Georgian society. It is not disputed that he was tortured and killed by senior interior ministry officials. But more or less everything else is at dispute: the Georgian state, represented yesterday by deputy justice minister Tina Burjaliani deny that the senior officials were acting on orders, even that they identified themselves as police officials when seizing Sandro. On top of that the state defends absolutely the integrity of the investigation and the court process and sentencing even though the current deputy prime minister is on record at the time as saying that the convicted killers' lenient treatment is a "big mistake".

The only ground on which the state was prepared to give way was admitting that the defendents had had access to mobile phones while in custody, but even then they attempted to dismiss its relevance by saying that they had launched an immediate investigation - the question of quis custodet ipsos custodiens plainly did not trouble them.

For their part, Sandro's father's representatives say that the state's claim to have investigated the case properly is full of holes, the evidence presented to the courts was doctored, and that the judge in the case did not act independently and that evidence is still being hidden.

The tone of the judges' questions that followed the initial presentation of the statements suggested that the state will be facing some tough questioning behind closed doors when the case continues in private.

Burjaliani's answers also showed serious weaknesses of the state's case - for while she had, in her initial statement made great play of the state's investigation into the use of mobile phones by the accused she was, under questions, forced to admit that the investigation - like so many that are held in Georgia into matters which embarrass the authorities - was ongoing and inconclusive.

Again, under questioning, she failed to answer a direct question about how many murderers were released under pardon (as happened to those convicted in the Girgvliani case) and instead said they were released because they had military rank and their crime was irrelevant.

Miners in Zestaponi are on hunger strike to demand the re-enstatement of colleagues who were sacked for being members of a trade union.

In theory Georgian workers have full rights to join unions. However, as employers can effectively sack workers without notice and without stating a reason, the trade unions say their supposed legal rights count for little.

The ruling party revel in this lack of employment protection - frequently citing the praise of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation for Georgia's lack of workers' rights as a good reason to invest in the country.

In other cases leading members of the ruling party have said workers who join unions "deserve" to be sacked.