Human Rights Report condemns prison conditions in Georgia

On March 31, Public Defender Giorgi Tugushi published the Human Rights Report for 2010. The document revealed violations studied by the ombudsman’s office during the previous year. The report considered all the burning issues related to human rights by analyzing the situation within the penitentiary system, the activities of the Ministry of Interior Affairs (MIA), police and judiciary system. Tugushi also spoke of the IDPs’ conditions, the results of monitoring of orphanages and gender-based issues. It revealed cases of property encroachment studied by the ombudsman’s office as well as labor rights violated by constant dismissal of public servants and salary liabilities of the state agencies.

The number of detainees in Georgia is constantly increasing. International research has shown that our country has the 6th highest proportion of prisoners in the world. 23 864 prisoners had been serving their sentences at various Georgian jails by December 2010 while there is scarcely enough room to accommodate them. The Public Defender’s Office and its prevention mechanism are the most truthful sources for giving evidence within the penitentiary system because their researches are based on monitoring carried out within the system.

Welcoming the introduction of new prisons with better conditions for the prisoners, Tugushi worried of the state of the detainees serving their sentences in older institutions. “One of the most harmful issues for me as the Public Defender is the increasing number of deaths at prisons which reached 142 this year,” Tugushi stated. One of the main reasons for this terrible trend seems to be tuberculosis, cardiovascular and other infectious diseases as well as hepatitis C.

“Death after departure was also frequent in the previous year. This term means delivering factually dead detainees to the civil hospitals. Lots of prisoners taken to hospitals either died in the way to hospital or several days after delivery,” he stated. There had been 8 cases of constraint death at different jails caused by physical and psychological pressure in 2010. According to the results of the court analysis, 32% of dead detainees had similar injures on their bodies. “These bruises consider traumas caused by non-medical factors. The expertise showed that these people had been injured by particular objects,” Tugushi stated.

Investigations on most violations have started but none of the responsible figures had yet been charged. The Ombudsman’s report also discussed the cases of violation from police officers towards the citizens. Most cases of police neglecting the ethical code seem to be common in the western part of Georgia where the officials physically insult the detainees. 85 of 856 prisoners with bruises have claimed that they had been injured during detention. The supremacy of fair court was among the important issues discussed by Tugushi who claimed the neglecting of legislative norms by the court officials and violation of human rights. “There are particular criminal cases discussed within the report stressing how the verdicts made by court lacked proper foundation,” the ombudsman stated.

The results of monitoring have proved that the penitentiary system has lots of shortcomings: irrelevant infrastructural conditions, incompatibilities between sentences for different crimes, abusive conduct towards the prisoners, and inaccessibility to medical services remain the burning problems within the penitentiary system. But the situation is almost the same at orphanages where the innocent children are mistreated by their educators. Discrimination against children, misuse of children’s labor, irrelevant environment for their development, insufficient food and lack of psycho-social rehabilitation have all been criticized in the ombudsman’s report.

“My recommendations used to be considered by Government, but there are some fields in need of serious improvement. Lots of my advice had been considered by the penitentiary system but the same remarks had been neglected by the Healthcare Ministry. I had stressed in my report that such an approach would just deepen the problem due to the initial mistakes,” Tugushi stated. Welcoming the new strategy against tuberculosis, the ombudsman said such steps could have been made earlier to avoid the terrible results we are facing nowadays.

The Minister of Corrections and Legal Assistance, Khatuna Kalmakhelidze, spoke of the controversial issues arising from the Public Defender’s report. “Each fatal case at prison is our personal tragedy. Relevant reforms have already been made to fight against tuberculosis within the penitentiary system,” said the Minister. Worrying that Tugushi had said nothing about employment, education and other issues necessary for the detainees, Kalmakhelidze stressed that the Ministry has been doing its best to rectify all of the flaws within the system.