The 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was celebrated in Georgia on December 10. This day has special historical value and has been observed since December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Georgian Ombudsman with a statement dedicated to this day, highlights all the main challenges that exist in the country in terms of protecting human rights and freedoms on his social media posts. However, instead of assessing various issues this year, the Georgian public defender has decided to focus on the main and important issues and respond to the most urgent.
Since November 28, the Institute of Public Defenders of Georgia actively supervised protests in Tbilisi and Georgian regions, they constantly assess the situation in human rights protection.
As mentioned in several of his assessments, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly is a fundamental human right that must be protected. According to him, they all see that the main challenge in protecting the right to assemble at these rallies is that instead of taking individual and proportional measures in response to a small group of participants breaking the law, the state and in this case the Ministry of Interior is taking decisions to disband the entire gatherings.
The Public Ombudsman once again called on the Ministry of Internal Affairs – to make special efforts in such cases and to respond to the illegal actions of individuals by carrying out individual, proportional reactions.
The following issue, which they have assessed many times, concerns cases of mistreatment of individuals immediately after the beginning of the dissolution. This requires timely and objective investigation to prevent impunity syndrome from encouraging law violations and causing more serious consequences.
After that the public defender, Levan Ioseliani and his trustees made visits to arrested and injured persons after November 28:
- From November 28 to December 10, they visited 327 people who were arrested and injured at the demonstration.
- From them, points to inappropriate treatment – 225 persons.
- Visible injuries were reported – 157 people.
- Once again, he called on the Special Investigation Service – to conduct prompt and effective investigations accordingly.
In his post, he informs the public that December 9 is the Day of Human Rights Defenders. He said, “Journalists also belong to human rights defenders and this year he wanted to emphasize them. Unfortunately, at the moment, several journalists or media persons have been injured, and several are still in the medical facility, disrupting their business and putting their physical safety and life in danger. It should be said again that only this case should be investigated and brought to justice and the state should ensure a safe environment for journalists to work.” At last, he again thanked the public, journalists, and cameramen, for their work.
