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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.

The laws adopted by the Government of Georgia quite often cause discontent among citizens but the Law on Political Unions of Citizens has caused particularly serious discontent within Georgian civil society. Civic organizations initiated a campaign under the name “It Affects You” against the new provision in the law; very soon a record number of over 200 organizations joined the campaign in Georgia. Despite harsh civic protest, the government put the new law into practice and a new, specially designed service office within the State Audit Company [Chamber of Control] took action against opposition political parties and citizens somehow affiliated with them.

Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum Georgian National Platform Appeals to the European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark and Minister for European Affairs, Nicolai Wammen, Denmark

On February 28, 2012, during his annual speech in Parliament, President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili referred to a student, Mikheil Aleksidze, who has been expelled from the public school # 53 as a hooligan. He said Aleksidze was expelled because of his disobedience to the school director. Saakashvili said we live in different time and criminal mentality no longer works in public schools.