“Stigmatisation” of Georgian judges as “corrupt” without evidence “unacceptable” - Parliament Speaker

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Wednesday said “personal attacks” on judges of the country’s judiciary were “unacceptable” when allegations of them being “corrupt” came without a “single fact or evidence”, in comments on the United States Department of State’s sanctioning of four former and current judges in the country.

The comments from the Speaker of the legislative body came after last week’s sanctioning of Irakli Shengelia, Mikheil Chinchaladze, Levan Murusidze and Valerian Tsertsvadze by the State Department under the visa restrictions authority.

In comments on the decision, the DoS alleged they had “abused their positions as court chairmen and members of Georgia’s High Council of Justice, undermining the rule of law and the public’s faith in Georgia’s judicial system”.

In his remarks over the development, Papuashvili said the “partnership and friendship” of the American and Georgian people “deserves that if there are charges against the judges, the evidence should be presented”.

“When such serious charges are brought against our citizens by a friendly country, and our strategic partner does not consider itself obliged to present evidence to Georgian citizens, the citizens of Georgia do not deserve such an attitude from their partners”, Papuashvili said.

They talk about open sources [in comments on the basis for the sanctions], therefore, we can assume that it is about certain issues raised in the media. A strategic partnership, relationship and respect means that when a partner calls our citizens corrupt, they cannot put us in a quiz situation when we have to guess what could the reason be”, the head of the legislative body continued. 

Papuashvili also highlighted the Georgian people had shown “in good faith” their partnership to the American people, including through the participation of the country’s servicemembers in joint peacekeeping missions around the world.

“We lost more than 30 Georgian soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 20,000 of our soldiers took part in [the missions] in various hotspots, and we had more than 300 wounded [servicemembers]”, the Speaker noted.

I think that when Georgian and American soldiers fought side by side in the same trench, this partnership deserves that we should not be put in a situation where we have to solve a quiz [on reasons for DoS sanctions on judges]”, he concluded.