Civil Georgia, Tbilisi \/ 10 Mar.2010<\/p>\n
Georgian human rights and advocacy groups met with British, French and U.S. ambassadors in Tbilisi on March 10<\/strong> to convey their concerns regarding recent cases of, as they put it, targeting human rights groups and activists.<\/p>\n Representatives from\u00a0Human Rights Centre (HRC),\u00a0Georgian Young Lawyers Association<\/span> (GYLA) and\u00a0Multinational Georgia<\/strong>, an umbrella organization for dozens of NGOs working on ethnic and religious minority issues,<\/strong> participated in the meeting held in the office of HRC.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been cases of direct or indirect pressure on activists and human rights groups and we wanted to inform ambassadors about these cases,\u201d Ucha Nanuashvili, head of Human Rights Centre, said.<\/p>\n He said, among other issues, the case of\u00a0Arnold Stepanian, founder of Multinational Georgia and representative of Armenian community in Georgia<\/span><\/strong>, was raised during the meeting.<\/strong><\/p>\n Some Georgian media outlets\u00a0alleged recently Stepanian was working for the Russian intelligence.<\/span><\/strong> <\/span>Posts made by anonymous users on several Russian internet discussion forums were cited as source of information.<\/p>\n One of such reports was aired recently by Tbilisi-based Real TV, a station going out in Tbilisi through cable. Its 9-minute long\u00a0report<\/span> on the issue opens with footage from a meeting of leaders of Alliance for Georgia (Irakli Alasania, Davit Usupashvili, Davit Gamkrelidze and Sozar Subari) with representatives of Armenian community, also attended by Arnold Stepanian; the footage is accompanied by voiceover saying: \u201cIrakli Alasania, Davit Usupashvili, Davit Gamkrelidze and Sozar Subari are sitting alongside with a presumed special agent of Russia\u2019s Federal Security Service Arnold Stepanian.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n In general targeting opposition politicians has become a hallmark of Real TV; but the way how the station does it has become a source of criticism from many journalist and media experts saying that the station\u2019s reports are often mudslinging.<\/p>\n After the meeting in HRC office, French Ambassador Eric Fournier told a reporter from Real TV: \u201cYour channel has specifically targeted some members of the opposition to make a very cynical portrait of them and it has been considered as concern by many of us.\u201d<\/p>\n John Bass, the U.S. ambassador, said the meeting aimed at getting \u201cfirst-hand impression, first-hand assessment\u201d about the human rights landscape in Georgia.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s part of our broad interaction with wide range of organizations so that we can assess human rights situation as part of our broad commitment to help Georgia to realize its goals of membership in Euro-Atlantic community<\/strong>,\u201d Bass said.<\/p>\n Denis Keefe, the British ambassador, said work of human rights groups was \u201cfundamental to Georgia\u2019s democratic development.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have good cooperation with number of these NGOs\u2026 and we have very useful and serious discussion,\u201d Keefe said.<\/p>\n Ucha Nanuashvili of HRC said that another case raised with the diplomats was related to a long-time investigative journalist Vakhtang Komakhidze, who has\u00a0requested asylum<\/strong> in Switzerland, citing pressure from the authorities.<\/p>\n On February 26 eighteen human rights and advocacy groups released a joint statement expressing concern over, as they put it, smear campaign against them.<\/p>\n \u201cInformation campaign against human rights organizations has intensified since December 2009. Those media outlets, which are either controlled by or have links with the authorities, have reported biased stories one after another, where some human rights groups were portrayed as the country\u2019s enemies working against public interests,\u201d a joint statement by 18 non-governmental organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Civil Georgia, Tbilisi \/ 10 Mar.2010 Georgian human rights and advocacy groups met with British, French and U.S. ambassadors in Tbilisi on March 10 to convey their concerns regarding recent cases of, as they put it, targeting human rights groups and activists. Representatives from\u00a0Human Rights Centre (HRC),\u00a0Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) and\u00a0Multinational Georgia, an umbrella […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":52500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,48,209,42,94,34],"tags":[2696,2698,2697],"class_list":["post-17542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-armenian-question","category-france","category-georgia-caucasus","category-russia","category-uk","category-usa","tag-arnold-stepanian","tag-human-rights-in-georgia","tag-multinational-georgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}