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Peaceful demonstrations celebrating the 10th anniversary of World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, and the International Day against Homophobia were met with violence and retaliation.

Violations of the presumption of innocence; revealing the identity of underage victims and defendants; copying of positions and narratives of law enforcement agencies; unethical epithets; superficial reporting and lack of professionalism – these are the main findings of the Human Rights Center’s monitoring of the Public Broadcaster’s news program and various print media outlets.

The most important human rights problems reported during the year were: 1. Abuse of prisoners and detainees by government officials as well as dangerously substandard prison conditions. 2. Shortfalls in the rule of law such as concerns about ensuring the judiciary’s independent and even-handed application of due process protections. 3. Government interference with unions’ fundamental freedom of association in several areas including interference with strikes, arbitrary dismissals, interference with collection of dues, and harassment and intimidation of labor activists.

More and more trees have been cut down in Tbilisi recently. Despite public protest, trees have been cut down on Moscow Avenue, in Kikvidze Square, in Victory Park and finally on Baratashvili Street as well. Sometimes trees are cut down to make way for police stations, but in Victory Park they were removed for the construction of a media library. Tbilisi City Hall claims that it was necessary to cut down the trees because they could not find alternative space for the police station.

Human Rights Centre condemns the dispersal of a march organized by the organization Identoba in observance of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

The Georgian Centre for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (GCRT) is pleased to invite you to the presentation of outcomes of the project “Introducing the four R’s in Georgia: rehabilitation, reintegration and recidivism reduction among Georgian (ex) convicts” as well as the results of the needs assessment study carried out in the framework of the aforementioned project.
The needs assessment was focused on studying the needs and problems of the prisoners and persons under probation. Both qualitative and quantitative studies were conducted. Overall 210 inmates and persons under probation were interviewed. The study targeted following areas: social background, record of imprisonment, health issues, conditions of imprisonment, conditions of probation term, resocialization measures / needs. The needs assessment was carried out through collaboration with Applied Research Company (ARC) and with the support from Ministry of Corrections and Legal Aid.

On May 1, authoritative international organization Freedom House released its 2012 annual report which evaluates the freedom of media worldwide based on the data collected throughout 2011. According to the report, Georgia registered progress and moved from 55 to 52 points. However, Georgia still occupies place among partly-free countries out of 197 states and territories and is still very close to 61 point limit which starts list of not-free states.

Georgian Bar Association and human rights defenders protest institutional persecution of lawyers in Georgia. The parliamentary majority avoids speaking about it. Minority representative, deputy chair of the Parliament’s Human Rights Committee Dimitry Lortkipanidze rebuked the Public Defender for not having reflected the facts of lawyers’ rights violation in his annual report.

Lately, opposition representatives have spoken about the training of paramilitary groups in western Georgia, particularly in the Samegrelo region. They have noted that the government is training a special contingent to be used to disperse possible protest demonstrations.