H.E. Eduard Shevardnadze
President
Republic of Georgia
Tbilisi
Georgia
Via Fax: + 995 32 99 86 90
Vienna, 5 March 2001
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and media executives, strongly condemns the assault on a Georgian journalist.
According to IPI’s sources, Tamaz Tsertsvadze, editorof the Tbilisi weekly newspaper Meridiani, was attacked near his home by a group of unknown individuals late in the evening on 24 February. Tsertsvadze was severely beaten with steel bars and the attack left him unconscious. He was later taken to hospital in a critical condition and diagnosed with a concussion, a broken nose and several broken ribs.
Tsertsvadze said that Meridiani received several threatening phone calls prior to the attack warning the journalist and his colleagues that they should stop publishing articles critical of the authorities. Tsertsvadze believes that the threats were carried out by people connected to the ruling party, the “Union of Citizens”.
This assault is only the most recent in a series of attacks on journalists who have provided critical coverage of the authorities. Akaki Gogichaishvili, an investigative TV journalist, was subjected to numerous threats in early 2000 after he documented allegations of corruption among high state officials. Moreover, on 24 July 2000, Vassili Silagadze, a journalist with the private weekly Eko Digest, was beaten by undercover police officers after he refused to reveal sources he had used for an article exposing corrupt senior police officials. After he reported the incident, an anonymous caller telephoned Silagadze and threatened him.
These attacks seem to be callous and deliberate attempts to prevent critical reporting and, as a result, they are gross violations of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”, as guaranteed by Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, such attacks create an environment in which journalists practice self-censorship out of fear of being targeted. Freedom of the press is essential in any democracy; this includes journalists’ right to freedom from the threat of being attacked in retribution for carrying out their profession.
Therefore, we urge Your Excellency to do everything in your power to ensure the safety of journalists working in Georgia. Moreover, we urge you to ensure that there is a thorough investigation into these attacks, and that those guilty are brought swiftly to justice.
We thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
