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Amnesty – Pre-Election Campaign or “mollified tone of the President?”

January 17, 2008
After the famous events of November, the President’s administration filed a draft law regarding amnesty to the Georgian Parliament. During the pre-election campaign, thousands of prisoners were released from detention centers on the initiative of Mikheil Saakashvili and Nino Burdjanadze; among them were political prisoners. Amnesty is always a good initiative; especially if we take into consideration the poor conditions in our detention centers. Nevertheless there is a different question which remains; despite many human rights violations in the detention centers observed by international and domestic organizations, why was the pardon initiated in the pre-election period when the government needs public support most of all? Does it mean that after this government is elected the number of the prisoners will increase? And generally, in what condition is the Penitentiary System?

Lali Aftsiaur, the chairperson of non-governmental organization “Commonwealth of Georgian Prisoners under the National Service Department of the International Prisoners’ Commonwealth”, has been working with convicted people for many years already and knows the situation very well. The Human Rights Center interviewed her:

-How timely and important was the amnesty declaration for “the Georgian Penitentiary System?

-Of course it was important, though late. You should know the system is overcrowded. We have nearly 25,000 prisoners. It is impossible to place all of them because there are not enough detention establishments, prisons, isolation cells, etc. You should remember how widely it was discussed when one hundred people were placed in a cell intended for twenty persons. After detention center # 8 was opened, some prisoners were taken there. This relieved the burden, but problem of overcrowding is not eradicated yet.

-How effective is the Law on Amnesty?

-As soon as the draft law was prepared I read the articles. I got surprised. It covered dead and inactive articles on which only one person of every thousand convicted may be imprisoned. For example, the amnesty covered illegal use of poison and the crime in which a ship-captain did not rescue a person drowning in the sea. The most acceptable provision in the draft law was article 200 that envisages the smuggling of cigarettes. Nearly two thousand people might have committed such a crime. Their sentence is only partially pardoned. You are certainly aware that nowadays a person is sentenced to paying a fine, in parallel to imprisonment. Thus if a prisoner is pardoned, s/he must still pay the fine. It is questionable how lawful such an attitude towards pardoned is because the size of the fines decided on by the courts is quite high.

-What will happen if the pardoned prisoner does not pay the fine?

-The law allows for the confiscation or deprivation of the property and in certain cases such a person may be detained. Not paying a fine means you do not execute the verdict and it is punishable under the law. Nobody cares whether the accused can afford to pay the sum of money. The court should certainly study the living conditions of the accused before fining him/her. The article on smuggling cigarettes dealt with people who were trading in the street; if they were rich people, they would not have been standing in the street selling cigarettes. All in all, as a result of granting pardons and maintaining the system of fines, many people might become homeless.

They have pardoned juveniles too. Though they do not mention the exact number of them. According to our information their number is large. Consequently, if we take into consideration this one article we should conclude that the pardoning was part of the pre-election campaign and nothing else.

-With all ensuing consequences of the current situation, do you think other articles should have been included in the draft law and which should those be?

-I think the prisoners who are charged for drug abuse. According to the current law drug users e are directly sent to prison. Although the sentence is not very long, the addict (drug-abuser) should not be placed in the detention center even for a month; I absolutely cannot agree with this type of punishment. Moreover, detention centers are unable to fulfill their primary goal - rehabilitation - due to the conditions in the institutions. The government cannot fund the treatment for drug-abusers. Thus, I think that the government should think about projects providing these people with efficient treatment instead of sending them to prison. The imprisonment is an easy solution for the problem for the authorities. The court sentences drug abusers to imprisonment on the demands of the Prosecutor’s Office.

-What do you think are the main problems of the penitentiary system?

-Although Mr. President stated that he had and will pay more attention to the protection of human rights, I should point out that the prisoners are being degraded in detention centers. Two years ago I visited prison # 8. There, when a prisoner intends to meet a lawyer, he is ordered to strip down and squat several times. Then he is taken to the investigation room to meet the visitor. He has to repeat the procedure before retuning to the cell. I have seen prisons in many countries, but have never witnessed a similar situation anywhere. Meanwhile, our government speaks of complying with European standards.

What can a prisoner give to a lawyer; he is in complete isolation in the prison? I think the guards are looking for letters even though letters are not prohibited by the law. In detention center # 8 the letters are sent to family members via the Red Cross. The relationship with relatives is restricted. If we want prisoners to reintegrate in society after having served a term, we should support their relationship with family members. I was studying the statistics and discovered that a family divorced while husband was in prison. When spouses do not have right to meet each other for a short time they might face the problem of sexual pathology.

Prisoners are physically assaulted. In order to take them to prison # 8 from detention center #7, convicted people had to go through a line of riot policemen who would beat them severely. Bacho Akhalaia, the head of the penitentiary department, has continued giving similar cruel orders.

As for the sanitary conditions, the newly-opened prisons are clean, but in detention center # 7 the sanitary conditions are so poor that 99 % of the convicted suffered from skin diseases.

-What is your opinion on the reforms implemented in the penitentiary system?
 
- I can claim that no reforms have been implemented in the penitentiary system except for the construction of new jails and training of employees. Unfortunately, the newly trained staff now demands the prisoners to refer to them in the following way: “Mr. Security Guard.” If somebody does not obey the new rule, he will be beaten. It is not bad to call somebody “Mr.” but nobody should not be beaten for not referring to anyone in that way.

As for the new prisons, many prisoners complain about the cold. We called a representative of the social department who explained that prisoners should have taken measures to prepare themselves for winter. The problem is that in summer it is very hot in the detention centers and the cells are not air-conditioned. Thus prisoners smash the windows. The windows have double iron bars and it is impossible to reinstall windows because of this.

Recently, Mikheil Saakashvili started to speak in a mollified tone, but that does not mean that something will be changed for the better. Prisoners were still beaten in December during the pre-election campaign…

Nona Suvariani, Tbilisi

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