Government develops Action Plan for protecting human rights

The Georgian government develops the Action Plan for protection of Human Rights. It will be mainly built upon EU special representative Thomas Hammarbergs recommendations.

Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili presented the Government Action Plan at the human rights conference today. He underlined that the new government inherited a difficult situation in regard of human rights.

"The previous government set the countrys modernization as its first priority, Garibashvili said, "but a lot of things, human rights included, were sacrificed for this.

Garibashvili named the prison scandal, peaceful demonstrations dispersal, taking away private property, control of private life, control of mass media, terror during elections, and politicalized court as the previous governments failure.

"We are the government that has made the court free. We do our best to let the judges actually be independent. Media are free. There is no medium towards which people have a doubt that it is under governmental control. There is no more torturing or inhuman treating in prisons. Private property is protected. We protect the right for private life and a proof of this is that, several months ago, we destroyed thousands of audio and video recording showing peoples private life details. Today we can say that people are no longer afraid of living in Georgia, the Prime Minister said.

Garibashvili stated that being a part of Europe means, first of all, to have human rights protected in the country.

The Prime Minister thanked human rights defender Thomas Hammarberg for the work he did during the last year in order to help the Georgian government to develop its Action Plan.

Hammarberg was sent to Georgia by the EU in accordance of Georgias ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvilis request. During the last year, Hammarberg had been monitoring the Georgian situation in regard of human rights. He presented a detailed report in September, stressing all the problems in this sphere and suggesting recommendations.

"There were systematic problems in the court. It was also a problem to protect rights equally. The Prosecutor was over-powerful. Pre-detention deals were not fair. Prisons were overcrowded. We have to admit these all in order to solve the problems, Thomas Hammarberg stated at the human rights conference.

At the conference, it was also underlined that no other governments in Georgia ever had a systematic plan developed to protect human rights. The government hopes that the Action Plan will be confirmed in January.