The Embassy of Netherlands to Georgia has awarded Georgian civil activist from the occupied Akhalgori district Tamar Mearakishvili with the Human Rights Tulip award and a monetary prize.
Mearakishvili, who lives in the Russian-occupied Akhalgori district, has been constantly persecuted for her civil activities by the de facto leadership of occupied Tskhinvali (South Ossetia).
She says that since August 2017 she has been under practical domestic arrest, as all her documents have been taken away by the de facto law enforcement agencies of Tskhinvali.
She has been charged with blackmailing the ruling party of occupied Tskhinvali, for illegally receiving the “citizenship of South Ossetia” and for the usage of fake documents.
In May 2018 Georgian Public Defender Nino Lomjaria also nominated Mearakishvili for the United Nations Human Rights Prize and Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize for her "outstanding contribution to defending the rights of conflict-affected population”.
The Embassy of the Netherlands announced the winners of the local Human Rights Tulip award today.
The first prize went to Guliko Khangoshvili, ‘a courageous woman from Pankisi Gorge’ who chairs Pankisi Women Council. She had been nominated for the prize by Kakheti Regional Development Foundation (KRDF).
The other winners were Mearakishvili nominated by Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center and Ariz Dashdemirli and Kamran Afandyev, ethnic-Azeri young men who have established an education center in the village of Sadakhlo, eastern Georgia, for university entrants.
They were nominated by Orbeliani Georgia NGO.