Network of Drug-Addicts Protest Repressive Narco-Policy

Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi 

On May 1, Human Rights Committee of the Parliament reviewed the bill initiated by the government. The law-makers discussed amendments to the Article 260 of the Criminal Code of Georgia which refers to dissociation of criminal liability for drug-crimes. The discussion was closed for civil society organizations.

“The discussion of the bill was scheduled on May 1. However, we could not get concrete information about the time. We contacted the authorized person in the morning who initially told us the session was postponed, then he said it may take place though could not say the exact time. I talked with the person at 12:11 and he asked me to call back at about 14:00 to issue pass on me. I called him at 14:04 and he said the session was already held at 12:00 pm though I called him at that time and he did not say anything about it. It means, the government representatives did not wish us to participate in the session and got rid of us,” one of the co-founders of the nongovernmental organization Rubicon and representative of the Network of Drug-Addicts Zaza Karchkhadze said.

He connected this fact with the April 27 controversy between the NGO and government representatives during the session at the Healthcare Parliamentary Committee. Later, they held protest rally under the slogan “My Repression Is Your Regress” in front of the parliament.

“The amendments to the law were developed in a hurry to show off before the Riga Summit; they are so-called Façade Changes and do not have anything with the human rights,” Zaza Karchkhadze said.

Deputy Minister of Justice Aleksandre Baramidze made completely different evaluations. “It is a progress to dissociate different crimes in accordance to possible public threats. Nobody argues that drug-selling is more dangerous crime than drug-addiction.” 

NGO representatives protest repressive narco-policy and request to dissociate drug-addiction and purchase-selling from each other. In addition, the punishments for those crimes should be adequate too. They believe the punishments in the draft-law, which were prepared by the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs, are inadequately strict for drug-addiction and it is equal to the punishments for particularly grave crimes like murder, robbery, rape etc.

“We have an impression that the government’s purpose is to fill in the budget with the money gained by punishment measures and fines instead prevention. Due to particular significance of the issue the signatory organizations petitioned to the Parliament of Georgia several times - more precisely to the chairpersons of the relevant committees to ensure meeting of the field experts with the law-makers with the authors of the bill and representatives of governmental institutions. Unfortunately the meeting did not take place and consequently our interests were not satisfied,” the representatives of the network said.

Unless the parliament considers their remarks, representatives of the Network of Drug-Addicts plan to organize large-scaled protest rally in front of the parliament on May 15 in parallel to the plenary session when the bill will be discussed. However, before then, on May 11, the law-makers shall discuss the amendments to the law in the Legal Committee of the Parliament.