(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 July 2002, RSF protested the ransacking of the Tbilisi Press Club and the offices of the Liberty Institute, a human rights and press freedom non-governmental organisation, by more than half a dozen men with iron bars. The incidents took place on the afternoon of 10 July. Liberty Institute Director Levan Ramishvili […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 July 2002, RSF protested the ransacking of the Tbilisi Press Club and the offices of the Liberty Institute, a human rights and press freedom non-governmental organisation, by more than half a dozen men with iron bars. The incidents took place on the afternoon of 10 July. Liberty Institute Director Levan Ramishvili was badly beaten and both organisations’ computers were destroyed.
RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard urged Georgian President Edvard Shevardnadze to personally ensure that the attackers are hunted down and punished. In a letter to the president, he said it was “feared those behind the attacks will make further threats against Georgian journalists.” He asked Shevardnadze to keep him informed of the results of the investigation.
Ménard noted that the two organisations “played a key role two years ago in winning passage of the country’s new freedom of information law, which protects investigative journalists and disturbs public figures they choose to focus on.”
Ramishvili and several other people were at the Liberty Institute offices when the thugs burst in. They were taken to hospital after being beaten up. Two days earlier, on 8 July, Member of Parliament Guram Sharadze led a demonstration in front of the Liberty Institute to demand that it be closed, accusing it and the Press Club of distributing information about corruption and the Soviet-era past of certain local officials.
