Opposition Unites to Protest Prison Conditions
Nine opposition parties have signed a joint memorandum calling on the authorities to immediately tackle ?the intolerable conditions? in the prison system.
The memorandum says the authorities are primarily ?responsible for the humanitarian crisis existing in the penitentiary system.?
The New Rights, Republican, Conservative, Industrialist, National-Democratic, Georgia?s Way, Freedom and Labor parties, as well as an IDP advocacy group, On Our Own, signed the memorandum at a ceremony held outside Prison Number 5 in Tbilisi.
There are currently 18,138 inmates in Georgia, the memorandum says, but the prison system has a capacity of only 15,040. There were 15,464 inmates in 2006, according to figures released by the penitentiary system.
The memorandum also says that the death rate among inmates is increasing. Ninety two inmates died in 2006 and 64 in the first seven months of 2007.
?The political parties in Georgia feel that sentences handed out by the courts and conditions in the penitentiary system are a shame for a country wishing to have a European-style democracy and is humiliating for the Georgian nation,? the memorandum reads.
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
