Human rights defenders criticize public talk of Georgian programmer's intimate life

16 Georgian NGOs criticized reporters of the "Mtavari Arkhi" TV Channel for discussing the intimate life of deceased programmer Tamar Bachaliashvili.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Teona Tamazashvili, a mother of the deceased programmer, claimed that she did not trust the investigators' version of her daughter's suicide.

On August 9, a young man, who identified himself as Tamar Bachaliashvili's lover, was asked live questions about sexual relations with her.

The human rights defenders expressed their indignation about the fact that the reporters were interested not only of personal life of Tamar Bachaliashvili, but also of the young man. According to the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the secret of private life is preserved even after a person's death, the human rights defenders claim.

While high resonance cases are of interest to the general public, journalists should not abuse their freedom of speech. The questions asked by the reporters on the air of the "Mtavari Arkhi" TV Channel to the boyfriend of Tamar Bachaliashvili "do not serve a high public interest," the human rights activists note.