Day: September 16, 2024
On September 16, Tbilisi City Court Judge Mikheil Kinkolia found Giorgi Shanidze, an activist against the Foreign Agents Law and the former soldier fighting for Ukraine in the war against Russia, guilty under the Article 265 of the Georgian Criminal Code, which provides for punishment for the illegal cultivation of plants containing narcotics, and Article 187 – damaging surveillance cameras. Shanidze was sentenced to four years in prison.
Shanidze was arrested during protests against the law. Initially, the Prosecutor General charged him under the first part of Article 187 of the Criminal Code. Later, he was also accused of illegal planting, or cultivating plants containing narcotics. On July 28, the court rejected his appeal for bail.
The hearing took place against the backdrop of a protest in support of Shanidze outside the Court. In announcing the protest, Shanidze’s supporters said: “Giorgi Shanidze was chosen by the Russian authorities of Georgia as the “best victim” among the citizens fighting against the Russian law, so that with his exemplary, demonstrative punishment they could intimidate the public, increase the feeling of hopelessness and injustice, and strengthen their positions before the elections.”
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Andrei Mialeshka, a Belarusian journalist living in Georgia, was denied entry to the country after returning from Poland. The journalist posted the information on Facebook on September 16.
He was denied entry to the country under the clause, officially stated as “other cases envisaged by Georgian legislation,” an official pretext that has been used in other such cases in the past.
“They are sending us back to Poland without explaining the reasons. Our passports were taken away and we are sitting in a strange room at the Kutaisi airport,” Mialeshka said in a Facebook post.
Andrei Mialeshka was returning with his daughter to Georgia, where he’s been living, in Batumi, with his wife and two children, for three years, since 2021 after leaving Belarus for political reasons. “I will be deported by plane to Poland. On the next flight that will be available. As I understand it, on the one that will fly back from Kutaisi to Warsaw,” the journalist told Pozirk. His one more child and his wife are in Georgia.
According to the journalist, he and his daughter were “locked in a room, their passports were taken away.” “They will give us our passports back when we go to Poland. They are not saying anything else,” the journalist said.
Andrei Mialeshka said that he had tried to apply for international protection in Georgia, to which he was told: “You lived in Georgia for three years, why didn’t you do it earlier?” He was told that he could not ask for international protection now.
RFE/RL quotes a human rights defender Roman Kislyak, another Belarussian living in Georgia, as saying that “in such a situation, a person can ask for international protection” and that it is enough to make a statement to airport staff, even if passports are taken away. The statement can be either written or oral.
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