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The Opposition activists arrested at the protest rally of IDPs and the open market sellers

August 18, 2010
Aleksi Bejanishvili

On February 19th, the Transfiguration Day, the joint protest rally of IDPs and the open market sellers ended up with the arrest of the opposition party members. The police officers arrested one of the leaders of the “People’s Party,” Aleko Shalamberidze and the founder of the youth movement “No.” They tried to arrest the “Conservative Party” member Lasha Chkhartishvili as well, but because of the resistance of the protest rally participants, they could not manage to do so.

Today morning, at 12:00 pm, the open market sellers and the IDPs gathered at the President’s Avlabari Residence. The IDPs were asking for the provision and legalization of the alternative residence places in Tbilisi. The open market sellers were asking for legalization of open market trade and the taking of relevant legal measure by government by regulating the conditions of the open market trade.

The protest rally at the President’s residence continued for about an hour and 200 people participated in it. The protest rally was organized by the representatives of the “Conservative Party” and “People’s Party”, Lasha Chkhartishvili and Aleko Shalamberidze. As a form of solidarity, the protest rally was joined by the movement “No,” non-governmental organization “Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights” and the organization “Solidarity with Illegal Prisoners.”

From the President’s Avlabari residence, the protest rally participants moved to the Parliament, where they were going to start the protest rally as well. According to “Interpressnews,” at this moment the patrol police officials showed up and tried to arrest the protest rally organizers, Lasha Chkhartishvili and Aleko Shalamberidze.

After the physical conflict, the protest rally participants got injured. Finally, the patrol police officials arrested one of the leaders of “People’s Party,” former parliament deputy, Aleko Shalamberidze and a couple of activists of the movement “No.” As it was found out later, they were transferred to Mtatsminda Police Department.

The IDPs did not let the patrol police officials arrest Lasha Chkhartishvili. “Interpressnews” spread the video material about the incident at: http://new.interpressnews.ge/ge/video.html?view=video&video=85

The head of Tbilisi Patrol Police, Giorgi Gegechkori was at the place of incident. He has been observed to conduct illegal arrests before. Especially noteworthy is the arrest and torture of June 15th, 2009 protest rally participants taking place at the Main Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, about which the former public defender, Sozar Subar requested the objective investigation (more on this at: http://humanrights.ge/index.php?a=article&id=3973&lang=ge ).

After the arrest of Shalamberidze and Chitadze, the protest rally transferred to Digomi, Tbilisi Police Main Department. Lasha Chkhartishvili decided to go to Tbilisi Police Department and surrender to the police officers.

According to him, the government went on the open provocation against the protest rally participants: “The police was trying to illegally arrest the protest rally organizers, and they did it, they illegally arrested one of the leader’s of “People’s Party” Aleko Shalamberidze and one of the leaders of the movement “No” Levan Chitadze. I’m not going to adapt to these illegal acts and will fight till the end. I’ll go to the main police department, surrender and request the official response why the conflict occurred between the protest rally participants and the patrol police officials, why we were assaulted.”

After the end of the protest rally, Lasha Chkhartishvili presented the schedule of the future protest rallies. The next protest rally of the open market sellers will be held on August 24th, 15:00 p.m. in the Akaki Tsereteli Garden; August 25th, 16:00 p.m., the IDPs will gather in “Mziuri,” and on August 26th, now traditional joint protest rally will be held at the President’s Residence.

Later, at the police department, a couple of minutes before the protest rally, Chkhartishvili stated: “Five days ago we presented warning in the City Hall about blocking the street and for all this time we never received the answer that meant their consent. Consequently, the police arrested them illegally. I doubt that the detainees will be directly taken to court, so we decided to hold a protest rally at the Tbilisi Main Department in Digomi. We are asking for release of the detainees, otherwise, I’m ready to be arrested. I was the organizer of this protest rally and if someone should be illegally arrested, it’s me.’’

From the police department, the protest rally participants moved to Tbilisi City Court where, according to their assumption, the issue of deciding the compulsory measure for Aleko Shalamberidze and Levan Chitadze was going to be discussed. Humanrights.ge will inform you about the end of the protest rally tomorrow.

As a reminder, the open market trade was prohibited a week ago by Tbilisi City Hall. Since then the open market sellers regularly held protest rallies as a form of their protest, parallel with collection of signatures for establishing the professional league.

Last week, the IDPs from the conflict regions of Georgia were evicted from certain districts. According to IDPs, government offers them the residence places in the village of Potskhoetsyeri, Tsalenjisha Region, although IDPs are asking for residence places in Tbilisi.

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