Human rights activists agree with Georgian Ombudsman's report for the second half of 2009

On April 21, Georgi Tugushi, People's Defender of Georgia (Ombudsman), presented to the parliament his report for the second half of 2009. Most human rights organizations gave positive estimates to the Ombudsman's report having noted, however, that formulations of the recommendation part could have been tougher.

Let us remind you that in the second half of last year (on September 30, 2009) Georgi Tugushi officially took the post of Georgia's Ombudsman by replacing Sozar Subari.

The main problems highlighted by Ombudsman Tugushi were overcrowded prisons, violations of inmates' rights and poor medical services in prisons, unfairly long detainees' custodies in pre-trial prisons of the Ministry of Justice, overcrowded and poorly maintained psychiatric hospitals, violations of human rights of children's home pupils and shortage of tutors and teachers.

As reported by Nino Ieremashvili, press speaker of the Ombudsman's office, the monitoring of psychiatric clinics was held for the first time. In fact, both the previous Ombudsman Sozar Subari earlier and Georgi Tugushi in September 2009 spoke about the need to draw attention to mental clinics and children's homes. It became clear that in psychiatric clinics patients' rights were not prejudiced - the problem is in overcrowded hospitals and poor equipment. While children's homes suffer from pupils' human rights violations and shortage of qualified personnel," said Ms Ieremashvili.

"Among the new aspects, not properly addressed before, are the rights of repressed persons and of those who received traumas in performance of their official duties, social-economic rights; and attention was given to the problems of homeless persons, and recommendations were given to the government on how to provide available habitation to people. Practically the whole previous topicality - rights of journalists, political tolerance and others - all this was also covered by the report. However, some issues - trafficking in humans and women's rights - were not covered by the report, as no changes were registered in them," the press speaker of the Georgian Ombudsman said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to Ms Ieremashvili, during the interval between the first and the second half-year reports of 2009 a number of meetings were held with representatives of different state agencies, which allow saying that the authorities in fact react to criticism.

Former Ombudsman Sozar Subari gave mainly a positive estimate to his successor's report. "The made serious work on penitentiary system; it was a good work. This chapter is very good," said Mr Subari; however, in his opinion, a number of other aspects could be addressed.

"Today, many people are in Georgian prisons on politic motives. Certainly, they faced purely criminal charges, but in the Soviet Union after Stalin nobody was put to prison on political grounds - they all were accused of criminal offences. Still, everyone knew then, and everyone knows now that there are political prisoners. It is the first point. Point two was the recommendation part. Requirements should be formulated more precisely. If the Ombudsman says in his report speaks that use of rubber bullets for dispersal of demonstration was illegal, the recommendation part should specify that the guilty persons shall be made responsible. In this case, the MIA bosses are guilty," Mr Subari has emphasized.

Most human rights organizations were also positive in assessing the Ombudsman's report for the second half of 2009, and specified just some drawbacks.

"In general, I believe that the report duly reflects the situation with human rights in Georgia; I can assert that this is a very good report. Especially I agree with the part on the penitentiary system," said Tamara Khidasheli, head of the Association of Young Lawyers of Georgia.

She noted that the Ombudsman offered to liberalize the attitude to prisoners. "Otherwise, the custody conditions will remain unacceptable, despite those reconstruction works conducted in most of the prisons. Another aspect that I completely support is the tradition to defend human rights. As you know, police and enforcement bodies all over the world try to apply force, but democratic countries have traditions to react to such violence manifestations. Unfortunately, Georgia has no such tradition, and the Ombudsman noted this fact in his report," Ms Khidasheli has noted.

However, she also believes that the recommendation part should have tougher formulations, especially, when we talk about use of force at detention or in relation to prisoners.

Anna Natsvlishvili, project coordinator of the Centre for Human Rights, believes that the Ombudsman should highlight different priorities in his report.

"The highest priority is independence of judges. But Tugushi says that judges' decisions are unreasonable. He is good and reasonable in writing about it, but I could not find a phrase there that the reason was not in inability of the judge to formulate a phrase, but in the pressure exerted on the judge. Sometimes one should not be so diplomatic, but openly state the problem, because he is Ombudsman not diplomat," said Ms Natsvlishvili.

Merab Basilaya, a representative of the Scientific and Production Association (SPA) "Alpe" said: "Unlike reports by Sozar Subari, which he had announced during the last two years, this report is more academic. Subari made sharper reports, not on facts but on estimates. And very often he was accused of political motivation of his reports. I just partly agree, because Subari made very adequate estimates," said Mr Basilaya.