Nino Tsotsoria
On June 26, Human Rights House Tbilisi had a discussion regarding International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. They discussed current situation in the penitentiary system from different angles and talked about the challenges and positive measures taken in jails and penitentiary establishments.
“June 26 is an International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. This year, the main topic of the day was right for rehabilitation. Torture is, on the one hand, the most severe violation of human rights and on the other hand, it is a stressful event for those people who are affected by this brutality,”-said the manager of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Center, Lela Tsiskarishvili.
It is already five months since Human Rights Center has been monitoring the women and juvenile prisons. The monitoring discovered various issues in the penitentiary facilities. Prisoners mostly complain about health problems and inadequate medical treatment.
“Inadequate health care, inadequate treatment equals to torture. Prisoners say that they do not receive proper medical treatment. Electronic queue for routine operations, post surgical treatment and medications create difficulties. Often, prisoners do not receive prescribed medicines and they have to replace them with generics, which does not lead to improvement of their health condition,”- told Tamar Lukava, a lawyer of Human Rights Center, to humanrights.ge.
In addition to health care issues in penitentiary facilities, there is another problem regarding search procedure, so-called full examination.
“When prisoners are being transferred to hearings or for medical examinations, they are fully searched, which includes denudation in front of a prison employee. According to prisoners, it is degrading and creates serious problems,”- said Tamar Lukava.
International Day in Support of Victims of Torture has been celebrated since 1997 in more than 200 countries. Georgia has been part of this campaign for several years.
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