Association of Young Lawyers of Georgia is indignant with report of TV Company "Rustavi-2"

The Association has sent a letter to the editorial board of the "Rustavi-2" in protest against the report that appeared in the "Courier" TV Programme.

Tamara Kordzaya, coordinator of the Association, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the pretext of the protest was in the report, where TV journalists said that the Association had sent a complaint to the Strasbourg Court against the actions of Georgian authorities in relation to the civilians who suffered during the warfare in South Ossetia in August 2008.

"In our compliant the attention was drawn to the gravity of violations of human rights and existence of proofs of them, not to the victims' nationality. Dividing people by nationality or other attributes is unacceptable for the Association of Young Lawyers - defence of human rights is the fundamental principle of our work," runs the statement published at: www.gyla.ge. The document specifies that 55 claims from more than 350 citizens, who had suffered from the conflict, had arrived to Strasbourg.

Besides, the statement marks that the same principle - defence of human rights - was respected later, when the Association sent a complaint to the Strasbourg Court against Russia's actions of detaining in Tskhinvali of four Georgian minors, and another claim - against the actions of the authorities of Georgia, when three Ossetians were illegally kept in that country. They were officially released on August 4, 2009, under agreement with the investigation.

According to the statement of the Association, the report in the "Courier" Programme stated that because of the Association's application to the Strasbourg Court on the case of the three Ossetians, the release of two minors from the prison in Tskhinvali was postponed.

The information department head of the Georgian MIA refused, in response to the question of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, whether really because of the actions of the Association the attempt to release the Georgian teenagers from Tskhinvali was broken, to make any official comments. Young lawyers and other human rights activists find this idea absurd.

In its statement, the Association attributes these mistakes not to some malicious intent of the authors of the report, but to low professionalism of journalists. Now, the complaint is on consideration at the "Rustavi-2" TV Company, which so far refrains from any official statements.