“Violence in the Name of Law” – Screening of the Documentary

Kristine Pakhomov

On May 24, Human Rights Center presented a documentary film Violence in the Name of Law. The film reviews the facts of abuse of power by police officers in recent years. Namely, the film presents cases of Giorgi Tsomaia, Aleksandre Akhalkatsi and Maya Kekelia, who were harassed by police officers.

Representatives of nongovernmental organizations and victims attended the screening. Aleksandre Akhalkatsi, Giorgi Tsomaia and Maya Kekelia spoke about the violence by law enforcement officers. It is noteworthy that there are new circumstances in the case of Maya Kekelia – she was compelled to sign a confession statement. Maya Kekelia has already petitioned to law enforcement bodies.

“The film was produced by HRIDC.tv, TV-studio of Human Rights Center; they have good experience of producing investigative films and video-items. The film is about a significant problem, which has become very common in the Georgian judiciary. The film was prepared in the frame of the project Human Rights Monitoring and Legal Aid in Georgia, which is implemented with financial support of the National Endowment for Democracy and aims at monitoring and documenting facts of human rights violation. The purpose of today’s screening and discussion is to remind our partner organizations of these problems. If we work together, we will succeed. We held several press-conferences about concrete cases. We cannot say that there are hundreds of similar facts like it were in 1990s. However, even several cases prove there is systemic problem. The mechanisms of responding to those violations are also issue of our concern,” executive director of Human Rights Center Aleko Tskitishvili said.

The screening was followed by a discussion. The participants spoke about concrete cases and general tendency, which prove institutional crisis in the law enforcement bodies.