The Human Rights Centre, Young Lawyers Association and Public Movement – Multinational Georgia attended the meeting with the ambassadors. In addition to that, there was Saba Tsitsikashvili, the regional coordinator of the HRIDC Gori office, who has been persecuted by the local government and last year the South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders had to evacuate him to Vilnius for three month at the Human Rights House.

NGO representatives introduced the situation of human rights defenders to the ambassadors. According to Ucha Nanuashvili, the executive director of the Human Rights Centre, there is an alarming tendency of persecuting human rights defenders. “Government is trying to gain control over the NGO sector”- Nanuashvili says and reminded the latest cases of harassment of human rights defenders (please see http://humanrights.ge/index.php?a=article&id=4699&lang=en). It was mentioned as well that defenders are especially in worse situation in the regions of Georgia.

Arnold Stepanyan, the head of the Multinational Georgia: “This campaign has started one year ago when the president openly said that he is going to create real NGOs in Georgia”. Later, he says, the direct harassment and persecution started against defenders. Tamar Khidasheli, the head of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association focused a special attention of ambassadors to the media campaign launched against the human rights defenders (please see the smear campaign against human rights defenders: http://humanrightshouse.org/Articles/13107.html)

Mr. Denis Keefe, the British Ambassador to Georgia welcomes this kind of meetings with human rights defenders and sees it useful to assess the real situation in the country. “We had a very important and significant discussion. I’d like to wish success to human rights defenders in Georgia. We want Georgia to develop and Human Rights Defenders play the core role in this process.”

Mr. John R. Bass, the US ambassador: “It’s important to hear a wide set of perspectives about the development of democracy and protection and promotion of human rights in Georgia. And that is an important component of Georgia’s democratic development and it’s ability to realize the desperation of membership before the euroatlantic institutions. So, for us to be effective in helping Georgia to realize these desperations, we need to understand what the real circumstances are, and in order to do that, we need to talk to those people who are working on that every day and are working very hard to advance the respect and promotion of human rights in Georgia.”

The meeting was organized by the Human Rights Center, coordinator of the South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders. The South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders unites 30 human rights NGOs in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Network seeks to facilitate creation of a safer and enabling environment for human rights defenders in the South Caucasus and to strengthen their voices in the region and internationally. Creation of the Network is financially supported by the European Union.