U.S. Report Notes Improvement in Religious Freedom in Georgia

According to the 2005 International Religious Freedom Report issued by the U.S. Department of State on November 8, the status of religious freedom has improved in Georgia, but the report also notes that ?local harassment, both verbal and physical, of nontraditional minority religions continued.?

The report says that attacks on religious minorities, including violence, verbal harassment, and disruption of services and meetings, decreased but noted that ?although police were generally more responsive to the needs of minority religious groups, they failed at times to adequately protect these groups.?

The report also notes that although the Georgian authorities arrested and sentenced to imprisonment extremist excommunicated Orthodox priest Basil Mkalavishvili, the government ?did not initiate criminal trials against several other instigators of religiously motivated violence.?

?Citizens generally do not interfere with traditional (Orthodox, Muslim, or Jewish) religious groups; however, there is widespread suspicion of nontraditional ones. Government officials contributed to this negative attitude by sometimes making derogatory statements about certain religious minorities, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses. Repeated, reputable public opinion polls indicated that a majority of citizens believe that nontraditional minority religious groups are detrimental to the state and that the prohibition of some of these groups is desirable,? the report reads.

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