Police Breached the Rights of MP Candidate and a US Citizen

Lasha Chkhartishvili

Lasha Chkhartishvili, Irakli Kakabadze and other members of the Egalitarian Institute (EI) who were arrested on April 23, were released the same day. Lawyers claim that Chkhartishvili and Kakabadze were arbitrarily detained because one of them took part in the ballot for majoritarian membership in the Parliament and the second is a US citizen.

Five members of EI were arrested after writing slogans on the road in front of the State Chancellery. They were arrested on grounds of causing public disorder and polluting the area surrounding a state establishment. The members of the EI were holding a theatrical protest demonstration with the slogan “No to Police Regime”.

Lasha Chkhartishvili, representative of the EI, stated that on April 23 the government demonstrated once more that they cannot tolerate any kind of protest.

“Several members of our organization were writing on the asphalt with paint. I personally did not write anything, but it makes no difference because similar action is absolutely legal. According to current legislation, asphalt is not included on the list of places where people cannot write protest statements.”

“We did not hear any order or request from law enforcers that could be justified by the law. Anything that they would have demanded, would have been illegal anyway. Policemen used physical force while arresting the protestors.”

“Afterwards, when we proved to them that they had arbitrarily detained us, they told that the law enforcers had asked us to stop the demonstration and that they had not ordered anything. The main point is that it was political revenge against me for being a candidate for majoritarian MP in Ozurgeti District.”

Nana Kakabadze, representative of the non-governmental organization “Political Prisoners for Human Rights”, said that the detention of Lasha Chkhartishvili can be considered not only a violation of human rights, but also a breach of all principles of free and fair elections because a candidate is given equal immunity as an acting MP. Based on that immunity his inviolability is guaranteed. Legal procedures against people with similar status can only be imposed based on the decision of the Central Election Committee.

“Police arbitrarily detained Lasha Chkhartishvili. One more violation was the fact that the EI members were supposed to be released at 3:40 PM but in fact they were held by prison guards until 9:00 PM, further restricting their freedom.”

“If a law does not restrict an ordinary citizen to carry out certain activities, implementation of those activities does not contradict the law. It was illegal when policemen approached the demonstrators. It could be a violation even though the policemen ordered them to stop activities from a distance. Nevertheless, these people were arrested and they were kept in detention until 9:00 PM.”

It is not the first time that police have arrested members of EI. Moreover, it can be said that these people hold the leading position when taking into account the number of those detained.

Lasha Chkhartishvili explains this trend as follows: “Our frequent detentions expose the attitude towards one of the most active segments of society because EI acts with creative, active and different methods and exposes every crime committed by the government. Thus, the EI badly damages the image of the authority and the latter tries to revenge us.”

“In the last occasion they could not properly take revenge against us because they could not prosecute us. In the future they will not manage to arrest anybody.”

Lasha Chkhartishvili thinks that they have gained two victories during recent days. “We won when Malkhaz Jangirashvili, being provoked, was finally released and we won when we were released yesterday.”