Human Rights Watch Points to Impunity for Abuse by Law-enforcers in Georgia
By Tea Mariamidze
Monday, January 21
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights, has published it World Report 2019, which reads that there is a lack of accountability for police and security service abuse in Georgia.
“Impunity for abuse by law enforcement officials remained as a persistent problem. Investigations, if launched, often led to charges that carry lesser, inappropriate sanctions and rarely resulted in convictions,” the report reads, adding the authorities routinely refused to grant victim status to those who alleged abuse, depriving them of the opportunity to review investigation files.
HRW says that by September 2018, the Georgian Public Defender’s Office received 149 complaints of ill-treatment by prison staff or police and petitioned the prosecutor’s office to launch investigations in eight cases but none of them resulted in criminal prosecution.
According to the report, in July 2018 the parliament adopted a law creating a State Inspector’s Office, a separate body in charge of investigating abuses by law enforcement, which grants the prosecutor a supervisory role over this body’s investigations, including the right to give mandatory directives on any investigative procedure, or change investigative decisions, compromising the body’s independence.
The report says that although the authorities took steps to establish a mechanism to investigate abuse by law enforcement, it did not give it full independence.
The organization also mentioned so-called Khorava Street case, when two 16-year-old minors Davit Saralidze and Levan Dadunishvili were stabbed to death in a street brawl in central Tbilisi.
The case prompted mass protests about law enforcement bias as the victims’ families claimed that the Prosecutor’s Office had deliberately concealed or manipulated evidence. The protests led to the chief prosecutor’s resignation and the creation of an interim parliamentary commission.
“In September 2018 the commission concluded that a former employee of the Prosecutor’s Office who is related to two of the brawl participants helped conceal some elements of the crime,” the report reads, adding Zaza Saralidze, father of one of the victims, criticized the ruling party for “protecting those who falsified the investigation.”
The World Report 2019 also includes Temirlan Machalikashvili’s high-profile case. A 19-year old boy died from a head-wound during a special operation in the Pankisi Gorge in December 2018.
Georgian law-enforcers claim that Machalikashvili was shot when he tried to detonate a grenade. However, the family and relatives say that he was sleeping when law-enforcers shot him without warning.
Asking for the “fair and effective” investigation, father of the deceased man, Malkhaz Machalikashvili has been holding protest rallies since May 2018.
“Authorities eventually launched an investigation into Machalikashvili’s killing, which was still pending at the time of writing. Authorities refused to grant Machalikashvili’s family victim status, limiting their access to the investigation files,” the report reads.
However, the HRW says that Georgian authorities created a human rights department under the Interior Ministry, overseeing investigations into domestic violence, hate crimes, and crimes committed by and against children.
