Georgia

(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ is urging Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze to order an investigation into the apparently illegal takeover of the independent television station Telekanal 25 in the Ajarian capital, Batumi. Late on the evening of 19 February 2000, former Batumi mayor and current Georgian parliamentarian Aslan Smirba forced three of Telekanal 25’s four owners to […]

(RSF/IFEX) – On 23 September 1998, RSF expressed alarm at the 21 September 1998 beating of journalists Kote Vardzelashvili and Gogi Kavtaradze who were working for the non-governmental Liberty Institute. According to information obtained by RSF, the two were severely beaten and threatened by police in Tibilisi while attempting to interview Chief Mgebrishvili, the city’s […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – On 23 September 1998, CPJ expressed alarm at the 12 September 1998 beating of chief editor Lasha Nadareishvili and correspondent David Okropiridze of the popular independent weekly “Asaval-Dasavali”. The journalists were attacked by a group of five or six unidentified armed men at around 10 p.m. on a street corner in front of […]

(GDF/IFEX) – According to GDF, on 17 August 1998, a trial of journalist Amiran Meskheli’s suit against the Saburtali Military Commissariat of Tbilisi was held in Tbilisi (the capital city). The defendants did not appear before the court, but Chairman Ramaz Doidjashvili delivered a judgment ordering the temporary release of the journalist from military service […]

(GDF/IFEX) – Amiran Meskheli, correspondent for the newspaper “Orioni”, appears to have been targeted for harassment by staff members of the Georgian Ministry of Defence. Following the publication in “Orioni” in May 1998 of an interview conducted by Meskheli with several soldiers in the military, the command of the Akhaltsikhi brigade of the Ministry of […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Georgy Chanya, a reporter for the independent Georgian daily “Rezonants”, was killed on 27 May 1998 while covering renewed fighting between Abkhaz rebels and Georgian guerrillas near Gali in the separatist region of Abkhazia, CPJ is now able to confirm. According to Amiran Dzotsenidze, deputy editor of “Rezonants”, the 25-year-old Chanya and two […]

(GDF/IFEX) – According to GDF, on 27 May 1998, Georgy Chanya, a correspondent for the Tbilisi newspaper “Resonance”, was killed in the Gali region of Abkhazia (eastern central Georgia). Chanya was last seen on 26 May 1998, by a cameraman with the independent Georgian television company “Rustavi-2”, in his native village of Saberio, during military […]

According to local journalists, on 17 July 1996, Rustavi-2, the leading independent television station in Tbilisi, with an audience of more than one million viewers, was forced off the air by the Georgian Ministry of Communications. Authorities claimed afterwards that the commercial charter of Gamma Plus Agency Ltd., the parent company of Rustavi-2 in Tbilisi, […]