(Tbilisi, January 16, 2003. Civil Georgia) – The Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued its annual report on human rights record in Georgia on January 13.
The report emphasizes on human rights abuse by the Georgian Internal Affairs Ministry and violation of the religious rights.
“The Ministry of Justice forensic bureau confirmed that the police continued to use wind-up military field telephones as electric shock torture devices,” the HRW report reads.
According to the report the law enforcement agencies and courts continued to afford “de facto impunity to groups of civilian militants who intimidated and assaulted members of non-Orthodox religious faiths, particularly Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostalists, and Baptists”.
“The authorities did nothing to counter a growing campaign of vilification and hostility against such faiths,” the report says
There are several facts in the report proving that some of the measures taken by the law enforcers during the anti-crime operation in Pankisi “in the name of anti-terrorism were arbitrary or brutal.”
The report also criticizes the Georgian authorities for the mismanagement of the local self-governance elections. The document says, “registers used for the June 2 local elections were still uncomputerized and in a deplorable state, opening the way for widespread fraud”.
Click for the Full Text of Report
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