Ombudsman releases human rights report to media

After parliament, blaming a busy schedule, declined to consider his report on human rights abuses in Georgia, the country’s human rights ombudsman took his case to the news media.

Human Rights Ombudsman Sozar Subari presented his two biannual human rights reports at the Tbilisi Marriott on March 28.

“The fact that I present my report here and not in parliament indicates the deplorable human rights situation and the government’s attitude to these problems,” Subari told reporters.

The ombudsman is scheduled by law to present biannual reports to parliament.

According to Subari, a committee was ready to discuss the report. Parliamentary leadership, however, postponed hearings until the next parliament is seated, saying there is not enough time left in this year’s session, which ends in April.

Subari accused parliament of dodging the politically sensitive issue.

“A lack of time has nothing to do with it,” he said, according to online news source Civil.ge. “… Parliament refused to discuss them not because it had no time, but because it, in fact, knows each and every case [covered in the report] very well.”

Chair of the parliamentary human rights and civil integration committee Elene Tevdoradze told the Messenger she concurs with the findings in Subari’s report, but says the ombudsman is partly to blame for the incident, after he missed a deadline in presenting the first half of the report.

She said parliament should have found the time anyway.

Other government MPs agreed that Subari left them little time to read the nearly 1400 page report.

“Subari said parliament didn’t want to discuss this report, but it was actually an issue of time,” ruling party MP Koba Khabazi said. “I think this is a little bit of exaggeration from the ombudsman.”

Subari’s report described human rights abuses and concerns throughout 2007, with a focus on the violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrators on November 7.

Subari said the November crackdown was part of a trend of human rights abuses in Georgia.

“The government and its officials are often committing unlawful acts against their citizens,” he said, and accused the government of making no effort to change its way.

“People are intimidated by the police, by tax departments, by the Prosecutor General’s Office. They are afraid that they will loose their job, or their relatives will be arrested, or somebody will plant drugs on them, and everybody in Georgia is sure that every phone is listened to by the police,” the human rights ombudsman said.