In the middle of July, various European officials visited Georgia. Among them were Kastriot Islami and Michael Jensen, co-repporteurs from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE); Foreign Ministers of Poland and France, Radoslaw Sikorski and Bernard Kouchner; EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and an Ukrainian governmental delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister, Sergey Tigipko.

The PACE delegation met both the representatives of the government and the opposition, as well as, ethnic minorities, civil society organizations and media representatives. According to Kastriot Islami, they will prepare a regular report based on information gathered during the visit. The report will include both observations and recommendations.

Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski’s visit followed the PACE delegation. At a briefing he mentioned that new president will continue the same politics towards Georgia that were characteristic in the previous administration. He reiterated the attitude of the Poland towards Georgia’s territorial sovereignty and mentioned that “we will never recognize the self-proclaimed territories of Georgia and will consider them as part of Georgia.”

French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, came to Georgia on July 14 with a simple message: Georgia must put an emphasis on civil society to end the persisting conflicts with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. "Shifting the focus to civil society would be much more effective than declaring war on the Russian Federation," said Kouchner at a July 15 meeting at Tbilisi’s Europe House.

The same day, EU Foreign Policy Chief, Catherine Ashton, arrived in Batumi, Adjara. She opened the EU-Georgia talks on an association agreement. The EU adopted negotiating directives for future association agreements between the bloc and three South Caucasus countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – on May 10.

On  July 9, 2010, the third round of the European Union-Georgia human rights dialogue was held in Tbilisi. The dialogue allowed for an exchange of views on the human rights situation both in Georgia and in the EU. As it was already the third meeting of its kind, the parties were able to conduct significant in-depth discussions on certain issues regarding the national framework for the protection of human rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. In particular, the talks focused on the reform of the judicial system, elections and electoral framework, freedom of expression and information, freedom of assembly and association – including the functioning of civil society – rights of minorities, rights of internally displaced persons and the human rights situation in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

On the eve of the EU-Georgia Human Rights dialogue held in Tbilisi, and preceding the opening of negotiations for a future Association Agreement, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has organized an advocacy tour in Brussels in collaboration with three key Georgian Human Rights NGOs: the Human Rights Centre (HRIDC), Article 42 of the Constitution and Transparency International – Georgia.

On the occasion of this visit, including meetings with the EU, SR for the South Caucasus, the cabinet of the European Commissioner for the Enlargement and the ENP, several Member States’ representatives to COEST and COHOM  and EC and Council’s services expressed their organizations’  deep concern regarding the situation of human rights in Georgia and especially on: the serious lack of independence of the judiciary; the Government’s refusal to recognise and tackle the issue of political prisoners; the limitations to Freedom of Media; cases of enforced disappearances of people belonging to ethnic minorities; cases of excessive use of force and ill-treatments; the situation of Human Rights Defenders.

Later in June, a delegation from the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court conducted a three-day visit to Georgia.  

The main purpose of the visit was to gather additional information from the Georgian authorities on the on-going national investigation concerning the allegations of crimes committed in the context of the August 2008 armed conflict in South Ossetia, Georgia. During the visit, the delegation received an update on national investigations being conducted by the Chief Prosecutor of Georgia and his team, and met with the State Minister for Reintegration, the Chief of the Supreme Court, and other senior officials from the Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Defence. The delegation also met with Georgian NGOs (the Human Rights Centre, the Human Rights House Tbilisi, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, etc.).

Constitutional reform
On July 19, the Georgian state constitutional commission approved a final version of Georgia’s new Constitution. There commission has organized a public debate on the amendments and includes politicians, academics and civil society members. It is a formal procedure required for any constitutional law, after which a draft becomes eligible for a parliamentary vote. Davit Bakradze, the chairman of the Georgian Parliament, will be attending the public debate on the constitutional changes.  

The opposition parties protested to discuss the draft so hurriedly. Every opposition party, including parliamentary opposition, signed a special letter requesting not to discuss and accept amendments in such a rapid fashion during summer holidays and to give politicians reasonable time to study the last amendments. However, the request was not considered. The public debate will likely be held during the month of August and the Parliament would probably start discussion of the draft, with consequent voting, by mid-September.

After it is approved by the Parliament, the new constitution will increase the Prime Minister’s powers at the expense of presidential authority. The executive branch, according to the draft, will be led by the Prime Minister as nominated by a party during parliamentary elections. The draft also provides some additional powers to the legislative body among others, and also includes simplifying the process of overriding a presidential veto.

The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), which is the member of the commission initiated for public debate, has identified four main concerns with the new constitution: 1. The President and the government is interfering in Parliament’s legislative power; 2. Parliament will have no power to establish a budget; 3. Ineffective accountability mechanisms of the government; 4. Decreasing the role of parliamentary opposition.

Tamar Khidasheli, the chairperson of GYLA, shares the above mentioned criticism regarding the time line and adds, “The proposed project, despite restricting presidential power, still has grave concerns: Functions of the government are increased whereas there are no adequate accountability mechanisms; The government has an influential power on the parliament and its legislative role is restricted; By cancelling organic law, parliamentary majority has the right to decide important issues without consulting with the parliamentary minority; Subjecting judges to probation periods minimizes the positive aspects of appointing them for life and further discredits such an appointment.”

According to the draft, the proposed amendments should go into effective on December 1, 2013. There are few provisions in the draft also, including one chapter dealing with the local self-governance, which should go into effect beginning in January, 2011.

Torture
Georgian NGOs claim that reports on torture are not followed with adequate and impartial investigation and that the Prosecutor’s Office often categorises such as ‘’abuse of power’ rather than “torture” or “inhuman and degrading treatment”.

According to the Georgia’s Public Defender, Giorgi Tugushi, the number of those subjected to torture people increased during 2009-2010. The Department of Prevention and Monitoring at the Public Defender’s Office, which monitors penal institutions, discovered various instances of beatings, torture, and inhuman treatment. According to the data from only three months in 2010, 221 prisoners with injuries were delivered to jails. Of those, 24 declared that they had received their injuries during detention. Persons placed in the penitentiary system often make complaints about beatings or inhuman and degrading treatment.
An additional problem of various penal and psychiatric institutions, as well as many temporary detention facilities, is that the living and hygienic conditions are so poor that this circumstance alone is considered inhuman and degrading treatment.
The Public Defender has made multiple recommendations to close institutions where conditions do not correspond with acceptable standards. In spite of this, the aforementioned institutions continue to function.  Investigation is rarely conducted on the basis of torture or inflicting bodily damage, but rather for exceeding professional duties, which is punishable with far lighter legal sanctions. It is obvious that such approach also hinders the emergence of a truly accurate picture of the torture and inhuman treatment situation taking place in the country.

In February 2010, a delegation from the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) conducted an 11-day visit to Georgia. The visit was the CPT’s fourth periodic visit to Georgia. The six-person delegation held consultations with Georgian public officials and the Public Defender’s office, and visited Georgian prisons as well. Additionally, discussions were held with members of non-governmental and international organisations active in areas of concern to the CPT. At the conclusion of the visit, the delegation presented its preliminary observations to Georgian authorities.

Excessive use of force
In the UPR report, Georgian NGOs took special notice to the increased tendency of using excessive force. “2009 saw a sharp increase in the use of the excessive force by police officers. On May 6, 2009, the law-enforcement officers used plastic bullets against peaceful demonstrators without taking any precautionary measures to avoid serious injury or casualties. As a result dozens of people were injured and two lost their eyes. The use of plastic bullets was not authorized by legislation at that time and was not followed by an investigation of the incident by the Prosecutor’s Office”, states the report.

It’s noteworthy that the report contains another instance of dispersing peaceful demonstrators and the physical abuse of journalists: “On June 15, 2009, peaceful demonstrators gathered in front of the Main Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and were subsequently attacked and beaten by police officers wearing civilian clothes. As a result, several demonstrators sustained serious injuries. The organizers of the peaceful demonstration, youth activists that have voiced their criticism towards the government, were detained, taken into the Main Department Building, and severely beaten. Afterwards, five youth leaders were sentenced to one month administrative detentions for “non-cooperation with the lawful orders of a police officer.” None of them were allowed to have a lawyer represent them at trial. Despite numerous requests, the authorities failed to initiate a criminal investigation of those responsible in the attack.”

Politically Motivated Arrests
Political prisoners still remain one of the most painful topics for Georgian society. The Georgian government denies having political prisoners whilst NGOs claim that there are numerous cases of politically motivated arrests. International organizations share this opinion as well. International organization FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) conducted a fact finding mission in 2009 and studied several politically motivated cases. Eight of them are included in the report. The international organization recognises those persons mentioned as political prisoners and recommends for the Council of Europe to mandate a group of independent experts to examine cases of alleged political prisoners in Georgia. Consequently they should render opinions on the said cases as to whether the persons in question may be defined as political prisoners on the basis of the criteria adopted in previous documents of the Council of Europe.

In June 2010, the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that the Council of Europe is interested in the pressing issue of political prisoners in Georgia and will conduct monitoring to this direction.

A NGO report for the UPR pays special attention to the concern of political prisoners: “Continuous peaceful demonstrations in 2009 were often the catalyst for politically motivated arrests of opposition political party activists and leaders, particularly in the regions. Almost all the cases follow a certain pattern – charges brought against those arrested are almost exclusively for the possession of weapons/drugs. Charges are based exclusively on police testimony; no forensic evidence on seized weapons is presented and no video evidence of the search and seizure procedure is presented.”

Judiciary
In the concluding observations of the Human Rights Committee, it is mentioned: “the Committee remains concerned at interference with the independence of the judiciary and the problem of judicial corruption. (art. 14)

The State party should take steps to ensure the independence of the judiciary. It should in particular take measures to eradicate all forms of interference with the judiciary, and ensure prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigations into all allegations of interference, including by way of corruption; and prosecute and punish perpetrators, including judges who may be complicit.”

Despite the abovementioned recommendation, the Georgian court system continues to lack public trust. According to Human Rights NGOs, the Prosecutor’s Office force judges to make decisions not based on the principles of justice and fairness, but rather according to the Prosecutor’s instructions. Otherwise they are directly threatened with forced resignations.

“The practice of transferring judges from one position to another, without the judge’s prior consent, is perceived by judges as equivalent to dismissal,” said Manana Kobakhidze, the director of Article 42 of the Constitution.

Elections
On May 30, local municipality elections were held throughout Georgia. The major focus for international organizations was the elections in the capital as Tbilisi elected its mayor for the first time. However, according to the findings of those organizations conducting monitoring throughout the country, significant shortcomings during elections were observed in the regions, especially in minority settled areas.

During Pre-election period, Georgian NGOs observed the following violations: ineligible people participating in the election campaign; the use of administrative recourses; applied pressure on voters; extortion of money from businessmen; applied pressure on journalists and political parties; destruction of election material; etc.

According to observers of the CSOs, the most widespread violations and questionable practices observed and documented on election day were the following: Obstruction of election observers; physically applied  pressure, threats or physical abuse; ineligible citizens (minors), or those without proper documents were allowed to vote; lack of Georgian language skills by voters to effectively exercise their constitutional rights; voters were followed by unidentified people or commission members into the voting booth. Also there were technical problems: the special tool for marking was often out of order, polling stations were opened in a highly inappropriate places (farms); wide-scale agitation by activists about electoral subjects in areas surrounding polling stations; etc.

Freedom of expression
Georgia witnesses evidence of strong tendencies of repression aimed at reducing freedom of expression. Journalists face physical and verbal attacks by representatives of the government while carrying out their professional duties. Many have faced harassment, seizure and/or destruction of equipment and other illegal interference in their activities. In none of these cases have perpetrators been brought to justice for their unlawful acts.

The UPR report says that the “legislation regulating freedom of expression and information contain commendable provisions that should advance press freedom and the right of access to government controlled information. However, serious obstacles remain in implementation of these laws.”

According to the law “public information must be released immediately, and take no longer than 10 days.” However, in actual practice, public bodies do not obey the legal requirement for immediacy, or do not disclose the information requested at all. A national demonstration of protest against this practice was a joint action of 16 regional newspapers who on May 3, 2010 printed their first pages blank except for one sentence printed on them, “Give Us Public Information.”

The electronic media, particularly, national TV channels that broadcast to all of Georgia are clearly pro-governmental and ignore critical views and social problems in their reporting. Ownership transparency of two private channels, Rustavi 2 and Imedi TV, remain confidential to the public. However, previous owners (or their family members) of both TV channels are challenging the legality of actions that stripped them of their property rights.

Human Rights Defenders
It’s noteworthy that during the last two years, human rights defenders in Georgia have faced different forms of pressure and intimidation which have included death threats, threats of imprisonment based on fabricated charges, e.g. espionage, physical and verbal assault, irregular inspections by state organs, stigmatization and smear campaigns in media and by high ranking officials, etc. This is as reported by the HRIDC which operates a project on the South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders.

It should also be mentioned that on July 26th, Switzerland granted asylum to a long-time Georgian investigative journalist, Vakhtang Komakhidze. Komakhidze, who asked for refugee status to Switzerland in February this year, is planning to continue working on a film documentary film about the August 2008 war.  Threats against him intensified after he travelled to Tskhinvali in December, 2009 to gather information for the abovementioned film.

Later in July, Ossetian a human rights defender in Tskinvali (breakaway region of Georgia) became the victim of aggression from the Ossetian government. As Amnesty International reports: “On July 24, Timur Tskhovrebov was attacked in the centre of Tskhinvali by a group of up to ten people, leaving him with a knife wound to the neck, a broken finger and various injuries resulting from blows to his face and body. He is still in the hospital recovering from this attack. The activist said he recognised his three main attackers, all of them members of the South Ossetian parliament, and that he believed he was targeted because of his journalistic work, dissenting political views and civic activism.”
In June Timur Tskhovrebov attended the Georgian-Ossetian Civic Forum in the Netherlands and co-signed a document that calls for the parties in Geneva to discuss Georgia in order to ensure that the humanitarian needs of those affected by the 2008 Georgian-Ossetian conflict are addressed and, as a matter of priority, enable free movement of people in the region. On 22 July, Boris Chochiev, a senior South Ossetian official, condemned such a forum as traitorous and harmful to the position of the South Ossetian delegation.