The Daily Beat: 6 July

In a letter addressed to the Georgian prime minister, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, asked to return Catholic Church property in Georgia. Cardinal’s letter refers to six churches confiscated from Catholics and handed over to the Orthodox parishes mainly in the early 90s of the past century. The letter was dated 23 January but has only been released to the public now.

Tensions erupted in Sagarejo when United National Movement (UNM) leader Levan Khabeishvili was meeting party members and pensioners. According to UNM, supporters of the ruling Georgian Dream party verbally and physically assaulted and stoned UNM members and accompanying journalists. Mtavari Arkhi TV reported that some attackers were identified as local civil servants.

Parliament is hosting the 48th session of the Parliamentary Assembly of La Francophonie (APF) in Tbilisi. The President of La Francophonie Parliamentary Assembly, Francis Drouin, is also in Georgia, holding meetings with the parliament’s speaker and prime minister. Meetings of the Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly, committees, networks of young parliamentarians and women parliamentarians began on July 4, but the main session will officially open on July 7.

Tbilisi City Court ruled that the patrol police of the interior ministry illegally denied entry to Aida Balafkan, a British citizen and anthropology Ph.D. candidate at the University of London, in April 2022.  The local NGO, Social Justice Center, representing Aida Balafkan in court, affirmed that today’s court’s decision validated the claim that Aida Balafkan’s non-admission to Georgia was unjustified and illegal.

According to the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Annual Penal Statistics on Prison Populations for 2022, Georgia ranked second among the CoE’s 46 member states in terms of prison population. Although a smaller population naturally results in a lower nominal number of prisoners, Georgia still stands out with 237 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest rates in Europe. According to the CoE statistics, Georgia is second only to Turkey in terms of prison population, followed by Azerbaijan.