Sakvarelidze: on April 11, Georgian authorities lost in "war of nerves"

The expression - "war of nerves" - used by both parties of confrontation in Georgia is quite topical: at night on April 12, the authorities' nerves failed - the only explanation of night "pogroms" on the opposition. This was stated by independent expert Ramaz Sakvarelidze to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to the leaders of the opposition, at night on April 12, a group of unidentified persons rushed into the tent camp of the opposition fixed in front of the Parliament and crushed the press centre of the action.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Georgia, on April 11 at about 11:00 p.m. cleaners from the Tbilisi Mayoralty came to clean the square in front of the Parliament. "The organizers of the action themselves asked to send a group of cleaners and agreed on the issue with the city municipality. However, when a group of cleaners arrived, the protesters started insulting them both verbally and physically. As a result, computers and audio equipment were damaged. Nobody was seriously wounded," runs the statement of Georgia's MIA disseminated in the morning on April 12.

The MIA also placed a video report from the venue in its website. The film shows that the cleaners in special uniform were indeed cleaning the territory in front of the Parliament. Then, a skirmish burst out between people in civil clothes, and some of the participants of the incident ran from the avenue to the metro station.

"The situation was strange; there were some unidentified people without any uniform; nobody could say who they were," said an independent Georgian journalist who asked not to name him. "The oppositionists say that computers were broken by specialists who knew how to do it. But it is reported that financial damage was very small. This could be done either by disguised patrol policemen, or by oppositionists themselves, or just by hooligans."

Soso Panuashvili, lawyer of the organization named "Human Rights" in Tbilisi, said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent: "We know cases when several young activists were taken right in the street. Two cars drove up to them: a white Landrover and a black Opel. It happened at night on Sunday, when the crowd was coming back from the building of Public TV to the building of the Parliament."

The young men walked along small streets, the cars drove up to them, people in civil clothes jumped out of them, forced two guys into one car and one guy into the other and took them away somewhere, where they were kept for several hours. "They were threatened and then set free, but their kidnappers tried to frighten them, saying that if they wouldn't stop and continue their 'activism', they would have problems," said Mr Panuashvili. According to his story, nobody knows who these people were, but there are witnesses of the incident, they know the car models and license numbers.

The lawyer has added that in the same evening there were incidents, when members of Nino Burdzhanadze's party were beaten near the Parliament: "There was just a fight there, and oppositionists were also threatened and asked to stop taking part in the rally. Just some people came, started to threaten, a fight burst out, then, the provokers disappeared. Nobody was seriously injured."