Police and other security forces have used brutal violence against largely peaceful protesters in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, Human Rights Watch said today. In widespread and apparently punitive acts, security forces have chased down, violently detained, and beat protesters. Police also tortured and otherwise ill-treated them in police vans and police stations.
Human Rights Watch spoke with a dozen survivors of police violence who said they had sustained head traumas: concussions and multiple fractures to their noses, facial bones, ribs and limbs, and scratches and bruises all over their bodies. Police were wearing riot gear or full-face black masks, with no identifiable insignia. The authorities charged hundreds of protesters with the misdemeanor offense of police disobedience, and prosecuted them in perfunctory trials, while failing to take effective steps to address serious allegations of ill-treatment.
"The level of the authorities' violence against largely peaceful protesters is shocking, blatantly retaliatory, and violates Georgia's domestic laws and international norms," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The scale of the police ill-treatment of protesters and the failure of Georgian authorities to hold them accountable for it indicates they either authorized or condoned the violence."
Massive, nationwide protests erupted in Georgia following the ruling party's November 28 decision to abandon Georgia's EU accession process. The decision came one month after disputed October 26 parliamentary elections that kept the country's ruling party in power, but local and international observers and Georgia's president said it was marred by massive vote-rigging and other irregularities. The elections also follows the adoption of repressive legislation targeting civil society and independent media.
Protesters have been demanding new elections, Georgia's return to the EU accession process, and the release of all unjustly detained protesters.
For over a week, the government responded to the protests with large amounts of tear gas, water cannons, and, at times, rubber bullets to repeatedly disperse largely peaceful crowds. Although there were sporadic and isolated instances of protesters throwing water bottles and fireworks at police in response to police violence, the protests remained largely peaceful. Georgia's public defender and local observer groups said the police use of force was repeatedly excessive and disproportionate.
Police chased down, encircled, attacked, and beat groups of demonstrators and dragged individual protesters behind police lines, where other officers would continue to punch, kick, and beat them with batons.
According to local monitoring groups, since November 28 the authorities have arrested more than 460 protesters, of whom the majority face administrative charges and approximately 30 face criminal charges. The rights groups said that over 300 of those arrested alleged ill-treatment and torture during or following their arrest, with at least 80 of them requiring hospitalization.
The Public Defender's office, which interviewed many of the detainees in custody, also expressed concern that an "alarming number of detainees indicate beating and ill-treatment." Lawyers and trial observers also noted that administrative trials had been perfunctory, with judges basing rulings solely on police testimony, refusing to consider or take steps to respond to defendant statements about beatings, torture and other ill-treatment.
Most of the people interviewed said that the police dragged them or others behind the police cordon near the parliament building and beat them. On November 29, Avtandil Kuchava, a 28-year-old businessman, tried to help his friend whom police dragged away and beat to the ground. The masked men also beat Kuchava.
"Three masked officers were kicking me," he said. "At some point, I lost consciousness from the blows to my head. When I regained consciousness, a [stranger] was covering me to protect me, but police were still brutally beating both him and me. I was kicked in the head again and I lost consciousness for the second time."
"When I came to...I couldn't feel my limbs, and everything was spinning. … Then one of the masked men struck me hard on the shoulder, which, as I later learned, caused an upper shoulder fracture. This blow caused me to lose consciousness [a third time] again. …I was struggling to breathe and was… gasping for air."
The same night, riot police grabbed Zviad Ratiani, 53, a well-known poet and activist, on Tbilisi's central Rustaveli Avenue, and pulled him through the police cordon. "They dragged me through the entire street while beating me, he said. "Sometimes they would knock me down and beat me on the ground, then lift me back up and continue the beating. [...] [T]hey put me into a police car, and the beating continued on the way to the police station."
He recalled seeing others at the detention center: "While I was at the police department, they brought in about 30 other people. Almost all of them were in worse condition than I was. Some were unconscious, and others were covered in blood from head to toe."
A 28-year-old Ph.D. student also said that during early hours of December 1, masked riot police grabbed him on Rustaveli Avenue and started beating him:
"As a result of the beating, I lost consciousness for some time. However, at some point, an officer struck me so hard in the torso that [I regained] consciousness. I thought [he broke] my ribs and I cried out in pain. Hearing my scream, the special forces officers rushed at me again and resumed beating me."
Riot police, as well as violent mobs presumably associated with authorities, have also beaten opposition media and independent journalists and interfered with media coverage. Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, an independent journalists' association, documented over 70 cases of interference and violence against journalists and media workers.
Aleksandre Keshelashvili, 32, a journalist with the independent online media platform Publika.ge, told Human Rights Watch that, although he was wearing his press vest and helmet, on November 29, a masked officer pulled him behind the police line, where several riot police officers kicked and beat him, particularly aiming at his head. He suffered a broken nose and concussion as a result.
The Special Investigation Service, a body charged with investigating law enforcement abuses, opened investigations into the "facts of exceeding official powers using violence and unlawful interference with journalists' professional activities," but no charges have been brought.
Georgian authorities meanwhile announced that they would award medals to the Interior Ministry officials whom the West had sanctioned for their role in the violent crackdown. Honoring these officials while investigations are pending shows contempt for the obligation to hold people accountable for the violence, Human Rights Watch said.
Georgia is a party to a number of human rights treaties including the European Convention on Human Rights, which imposes obligations on the government to respect the right to freedom of assembly and to refrain in all circumstances from engaging in prohibited ill-treatment. The government also has a duty to investigate and remedy violations of those obligations.
Georgia has similar obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In its recent judgment against Georgia, the European Court of Human Rights reiterated that for accountability purposes, when national authorities deploy masked police officers, they "should be required to visibly display some distinctive insignia, such as a warrant number."
The authorities should immediately call a halt to the police violence, respect the rights to peaceful assembly and expression, and promptly and effectively investigate all allegations of beatings, torture and other ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said. Such investigations should ensure not only individual accountability, but command responsibility for the excessive use of force.
Georgia's international partners should seek independent investigations into the post-election violence. On December 23, participating states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe triggered the Vienna Mechanism, which calls on the Georgian authorities to provide detailed and substantive information on a number of concerns, including on arbitrary arrests and detentions and ill-treatment of protesters. If the Georgian government does not respond, participating states should be prepared to escalate to the Moscow Mechanism, an inquiry that does not require the targeted state's consent.
EU member states should use the EU's Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime to sanction officials responsible for authorizing and carrying out beatings and violence against Georgia's protesters. At the same time, the EU should step-up, flexible democracy support for civil society and the media.
"Georgian authorities should free all those detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to assembly," Williamson said. "There needs to be a reckoning and accountability for the broken bones and other injuries police intentionally inflicted on so many people."
