Yesterday evening, Georgian time, the US State Department published their human rights report for 2009 and the chapter for Georgia makes dismal reading.
The main human rights abuses reported during the year included at 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. Respect for media freedom declined, and there were cases of government interference with the rights of assembly and association. While three months of protests by the nonparliamentary opposition were generally held peacefully, there was a clear imbalance in protest-related incidents--crimes against government officials were investigated and solved quickly, while this was not the case for crimes committed against nonparliamentary opposition activists. There were some cases of restrictions on religious freedom and a lack of progress on such religious problems as the determination of ownership of disputed churches and the unequal status of non-Georgian Orthodox religions. Abuse of women and children, trafficking in persons, and societal discrimination and prejudice against persons based on their sexual orientation were also reported.
It is worth reading all of it - there is too much for us to do justice to it here, but looking at the "main human rights abuses"...
"excessive use of force" ... "abuse of prisoners"
Allegations of violence against state officials are investigated with speed. Allegations against state officials go nowhere:
In 2006 the Prosecutor General's Office opened an investigation to determine whether law enforcement agents acted in accordance with the law during a prison riot in Tbilisi Prison Number 5 that year. During the riot seven prisoners were killed and 22 injured; two Special Forces Task Force officers were wounded. According to information provided to the Public Defender's Office by the Office of the Prosecutor General, the investigation into the incident continued at year's end. Tbilisi Prison Number 5 was demolished in 2008.
The principal state official involved in this case was Bacho Akhalaia (pictured, left), who was made defence minister in 2009.
"politically motivated kidnappings and assaults"
On August 1, unidentified assailants attacked well-known karate and wrestling champion Amiran Bitsadze and his friend David Bendeliani. Bitsadze was a member of the nonparliamentary opposition party Democratic Movement-United Georgia (DMUG). The DMUG reported that Bitsadze and Bendeliani were driving in Tbilisi when they came across a minibus blocking the road. They reported that 15 to 18 masked assailants dragged them out of the car and beat them. Bendeliani was left on the street, but Bitsadze was taken away in a car. The DMUG said that Bitsadze was later found on a highway with two bullet-like wounds on his back, a broken leg, and a broken arm. The DMUG claimed that the wounds on Bitsadze's back came from rubber bullets similar to those the government used and that Bendeliani had described the vehicle as similar to those used by police special forces. The DMUG claimed that the motivation for the attack was Bitsadze's affiliation with the party. An investigation by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the ministry under which all police departments fall, was underway at year's end.
"politically motivated imprisonment"
During the year law enforcement officers reportedly planted drugs or weapons in order to arrest and charge individuals in a number of criminal cases, many of which were considered politically motivated. The following common factors were present in many of these cases: Charges were often only supported by police officer testimony; forensic or ballistic evidence to corroborate police testimony was typically not presented in these cases; and police commonly did not conduct searches with a warrant. While such additional evidence was not legally mandated, its absence, especially given allegations of political motivation, raised concerns among observers.
"excessive use of force to disperse demonstrations"
The public defender reported that on April 6, Versia newspaper journalists Ana Khavtasi and Nino Komakhidze were physically assaulted at an opposition protest rally in front of the Public Broadcaster's building. Law enforcement officials issued an order to rally participants to disperse. Ana Khavtasi was taking pictures as the policemen reportedly were beating the demonstrators. Allegedly, the police decided to take her camera away, but both journalists resisted. The police hit Khavtasi in the forehead and pulled Komakhidze's hair. The journalists managed to keep the camera and printed the photographs on the front page of Versia the following day. MPs condemned the incident. No investigation followed.
"pressure that appeared politically motivated on owners of property"
NGOs continued to report that police conducted searches, and may also have occasionally monitored private telephone conversations, without first obtaining court orders; police often obtained warrants after the fact. NGOs reported that most citizens were unaware of their right to delay a search of their home by one hour in order to summon two objective third-party witnesses to the search. The government stated that security police and tax authorities entered homes and workplaces without prior legal sanction. NGOs and some opposition members contended that the targeting of certain companies and persons for searches by tax authorities was politically motivated; they viewed subsequent fines as a form of "legal extortion" by the government. This practice was reported by businesses and persons across the political spectrum.
"lack of due process"
In 2007, according to HRW, restaurant owners in Tbilisi and a neighboring town complained that officials pressured them into handing over their property by threatening them with criminal charges for allegedly purchasing their property through corrupt business transactions during the Shevardnadze era. The government contended that these were cases of property with expired or ambiguous leases or obtained through fraudulent transactions or bribery linked to corruption. Domestic and international observers expressed concern that the government had not sufficiently respected due process and the rule of law. The public defender mentioned this concern in his December 2008 remarks to parliament. The current public defender did not include any new reports on these incidents in his last report, on the second half of the year.
"government pressure on the judiciary"
NGOs reported victims often did not report abuse, fearing police retribution against them or their families. NGOs also continued to claim that close ties between the Prosecutor General's Office and police hindered their ability to substantiate police misconduct and alleged that the judiciary's lack of professionalism and independence made it unresponsive to torture allegations. As a result, despite implementation of positive reforms, NGOs claimed law enforcement officials could still resort to torture or mistreatment with limited risk of exposure or punishment. NGOs also believed a lack of adequate training for law enforcement officers, as well as low public awareness of the protections afforded citizens, impeded improvements.
"senior-level corruption in the government"
The law provides criminal penalties for official corruption. While the government implemented these laws effectively against low-level corruption, which decreased as a result of high profile reforms led by the president, some NGOs alleged that senior-level officials engaged in corruption with impunity. The World Bank's worldwide governance indicators reflected that corruption was a serious problem.
There was a general consensus among public officials and civil society organizations that levels of petty corruption fell after the 2003 Rose Revolution. Only 2 percent of the respondents to Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer, released on June 3, reported having to pay a bribe in the past year. Observers attributed the improvement to the detention of corrupt public officials, increases in public servants' salaries, and the simplification of administrative procedures.
In spite of this, high-level corruption remained a persistent concern, and observers considered the official anticorruption campaign too heavily focused on prosecution as opposed to prevention and too ad hoc rather than systemic and participatory in nature. Areas of concern included democratic institutions, civil society involvement in the planning and execution of public policy, property rights, and elite corruption.
The main human rights abuses reported during the year included at least two suspected deaths due to excessive use of force by law enforcement officers, intimidation of suspects, abuse of prisoners, poor conditions in prisons and pretrial detention facilities, police impunity, lack of access for average citizens to defense attorneys, reports of politically motivated detentions, lack of due process in some cases, and reports of government pressure on the judiciary. Respect for freedom of speech and the press lessened, but began to rebound by year's end. Other problems included reports of corruption among senior officials and trafficking in persons.
This is Mikheil Saakashvili's resignation statement on 8 November 2007 - for the first time (we believe) with English subtitles.
The contrast with the statement of the previous day (see here) could hardly be clearer.
As is so often the case with Saakashvili when he felt weak (as on 7 November) he appeared contrite and conciliatory, saying the day before that he thought the vast majority of the opposition were patriots and not involved in any foreign conspiracy.
Now that his police force have beaten the opposition off the streets, smashed up the country's most popular TV station and demonstrated that they are able to act above the law in association with masked and armed gangs, he feels confident enough to change his story and label the events of the previous day as a defence of democracy against a pre-planned foreign attack.
The anti-pluralist mindset of the president is also apparent: he regards the fact that no-one of any significance disagrees with him or is able to exert significant influence in the state is a good thing. Overall the speech feels more like the Czar telling his subjects how good he is to them rather than that of a democratic president asking for a new endorsement.
Update: Unfortunately the first upload suffered from sychronisation problems, hopefully the version here now is better, but the poor quality of the original video remains - though we have cleaned up the sound somewhat. If you want your own copy you can download an AVI file from here.
No one has ever accused Mikheil Saakashvili of lacking "the vision thing" but his frequent hyperbolic flights of fancy seem more like out-of-touch bombast than inspiration when one considers the country's grim economic and social state.
And while the content is different the tone is easily recognisable from the communist past: Khruschev's promise that "this generation will know communism" comes to mind.
Today, though, was another speech and another opportunity for rhetoric on an epic scale, as reported by Civil.ge:
"The major thing, that we should create and which represents our major challenge and task, is creation of the highest level of education system in this region and hopefully in Europe and in the world – like it was in Singapore, like it was in Switzerland.
"Because we are Switzerland of this region with elements of Singapore; of course we have a long way ahead before reaching that point. [Georgia] is the place where most of the financial interests will be concentrated, the most of the business activities will be concentrated, the most of the transport and tourism infrastructure will be concentrated; we will create all these together with our friends; these children [referring to school children standing behind him] should make all this work – these are the most honorable citizens of future Georgian Switzerland, future Georgian Singapore, future Georgian Dubai, Georgian Hong Kong and of greatest Georgia of all times.”
It won't have been missed that of the of the four states he mentions, only one, Switzerland, is a democracy. Singapore has elections but opposition parties that threaten to even win more than a few seats are repressed, Dubai is a near-absolute monarchy (where 250,000 labourers have been described as living in "less than human" conditions) and in Hong Kong the part-elected assembly has little power compared to the chief executive appointed by the Chinese Communist Party.
In recent weeks much debate has focused on Russia's attempts to rehabilitate the memory of Joseph Stalin, who ruled as a dictator in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953.
Stalin's rule saw the deaths of a minimum of four million killed for political reasons and perhaps another six million, mainly in Ukraine, in were killed as a result of famine which itself was the consequence of Stalin's policy of forced collectivisation. On top of that he destroyed the Red Army's command at the moment of maximum danger of Nazi attack and then signed an agreement with Hitler which, as well as destoying the independence of Poland and the Baltic States, handed a massive strategic advantage to Germany.
But - although he left the Soviet Union so open to attack and he even had those who warned him of the imminence of a German blitzkrieg shot as "provocateurs" - Stalin is widely credited as the architect of victory of the Great Patriotic War. So this spring Moscow is to be decorated with posters of his likeness to mark the 65th anniversary of the crushing of Nazi power.
But Stalin was not a Russian at all - but a Georgian (with Ossetian roots). Born Ioseb Jughashvili (იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი) in Gori, where his statue still stands in the main town square (see picture).
The statute's prominence in one of Georgia's biggest towns is an illustration of the ambivalence in Georgian society about Stalin, his supposed achievements and his legacy to the country of his birth.
Fifty-four years ago today Tbilisi's citizens protested Khruschev's denuniciation of Stalin, taking his successor's attack on Stalin as an attack on Georgian greatness.
Not for the last time under Soviet rule, Georgian protests ended in tragedy as troops fired on the protestors, killing dozens or more.
Today there is a renewed debate on Stalin, with a particular focus on Stalin. One leading supporter of Mikheil Saakashvili has even appeared to endorse the idea of an illegal military-style attack on the statue - in October last year Levan Ramishvili, of the Liberty Institute stated:
"The monument must be completely destroyed. Since the Georgian government is being careful, this should be a civil initiative. I would not rule out that somebody blows up the monument in the night."
Most supporters of removing the statue from the town square take a less extreme view, advocating that it should be moved to a museum. But as the film below here - another one from Transitions Online/Liberali - the view on the street of Stalin can be extremely polarised.
six million, mainly in Ukraine, in were killed as a result of famine which itself was the consequence of Stalin's policy of forced collectivisation. On top of that he destroyed the Red Army's command at the moment of maximum danger of Nazi attack and then signed an agreement with Hitler which, as well as destoying the independence of Poland and the Baltic States, handed a massive strategic advantage to Germany.
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