Public Defender Lashes Out at Parliament
Following Parliament’s refusal to listen to his 2007 report on human rights, Public Defender Sozar Subari presented the report at a conference in Tbilisi on March 28.
Subari told the conference, attended by civil society and media figures and representatives from international missions in Georgia: “The obvious evidence of the deplorable state of human rights in the country and the scornful attitude of the state towards these rights means I am honored to deliver this address here today, before you, and not before Parliament.”
Nino Burjanadze, the parliamentary chairperson, said on March 17 that the sitting parliament would not consider Subari’s report, citing a lack of time. Parliament had been scheduled to consider Subari’s two bi-annual reports (744 and 633 pages respectively) covering the country’s human rights record in 2007.
Subari, however, told the conference on March 28 that time constraints were a pretext.
“A lack of time has nothing to do with it,” he said. “Yes, the reports are really comprehensive, reflecting hundreds of cases of human rights abuse; but Parliament refused to discuss them not because it had no time, but because it, in fact, knows very well each and every case. Parliament knows them because all those cases of human rights abuse took place in Georgia, openly, publicly, right in front of Parliament’s eye with its consent and often even with its incitement.”
The report covering the second half of 2007 is especially critical of the state’s response to November’s demonstrations, demanding Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili take responsibility for police actions.
