Web Portal on Human Rights in Georgia

Police officers did not allow the IDPs from Abkhazia to set up tents during their protest in Batumi that ended with minor incident.

Interpresnews correspondent from Batumi reported that IDPs from Abkhazia assembled behind the Drama Theatre to request the authority to assign accommodations to them and started to set up tents there; but the police did not allow them. Several dozen police officers approached the protesters when they were setting up tents. Nazibrola Kobuladze, head of Adjara office of the Christian-Democrat Movement, told the IPN that organizers of the assembly had permission from the Batumi City Hall to hold protest assembly. According to Kobuladze, families without IDP status were lodged into the new residential buildings specially constructed for IDPs in the Benze Settlement, Batumi.

60 IDP families from Abkhazia request accommodations in the IDP residential buildings. “35 families without IDP status live in the buildings. Moreover, the government brought them from other regions while local IDPs do not have shelters,” the protesters said.