Media-freedom battle erupts into crisis in former Soviet republic of Georgia

By Gene Mater
freedomforum.org

11.01.01

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The president of the former Soviet republic of Georgia fired his entire cabinet today as a battle over media freedom erupted into a full-fledged political crisis.

President Eduard Shevardnadze's decision to dismiss his cabinet came two days after a security service raid on an independent television station that prompted opposition calls for the president and his team to step down.

Thousands of demonstrators, mostly students, gathered outside Parliament today to demand exactly that, the Associated Press reported from Tbilisi. Parliamentary speaker Zurab Zhvania, the second-ranking politician in the fractious former Soviet state, said he was resigning, but fresh elections did not appear imminent, Reuters reported.

Demonstrators, mostly students, some waving Georgian national flags, protest outside Parliament in Tbilisi, Georgia, today.

The unraveling began on Oct. 30, when 30 state security agents raided the offices of the country's main private television news company, Rustavi-2, presenting a court order that accused the management of evading taxes, according to AP.

The company's director refused to let them in and they retreated, jeered by a crowd of Rustavi supporters.

Rustavi-2 director general Nika Tabatadze said the company had gone through a tax audit a week earlier and was clear of any debt to the state, according to the BBC, which quoted Tabatadze as saying, "This all is clearly happening on a political order from the authorities."

The station, founded in 1994, is widely respected in Georgia and is known for criticizing Shevardnadze and alleging corruption and other abuses by the authorities.

In quick succession, Shevardnadze insisted that he would defend freedom of speech, and said he had ordered an investigation into the legitimacy of the raid. "I can assure you that as long as I remain president of Georgia there will be no threat to freedom of speech," he said.

"There is no threat for the freedom of speech in Georgia," Shevardnadze said. "It is inviolable."

He accepted Security Minister Vakhtang Kutateladze's resignation yesterday as the "right" decision, although he also criticized the station staff for defying the court order to open its financial records for examination. Shevardnadze said he had accepted Kutateladze's resignation because "there is still an impression that the methods used by the security ministry were not very well thought of."

International media-watchdog groups immediately condemned the raid. Statements of concern were fired off by the Vienna-based International Press Institute, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres. The BBC Online report of the incident was headlined, "Free speech fears after Georgia TV raid."

"We condemn this blatant effort to intimidate Rustavi-2," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. "Georgian officials must understand that harassing local media outlets will merely increase the public scrutiny they seem so anxious to avoid."

The BBC also reported that Shevardnadze's opponents have noted out how similar the events surrounding Rustavi-2 are to the Kremlin's persecution of the Russian television channel NTV, whose head, Vladimir Gusinsky, became an arch-opponent of President Vladimir Putin over criticism of Russia's actions in Chechnya.

Public support for Rustavi-2 seems unbounded. In Moscow, Pravda today reported that "many thousands" had turned out for the Parliament building protest in support of Rustavi-2.

Shevardnadze, a former Georgian Communist Party leader and Soviet foreign minister, was re-elected as president in 2000 with a pledge to wage war on poverty and corruption. However, press reports of the television station incident say his dealings with the news media could be a crucial indicator of how he intends to carry out his policies.

A presidential spokesman said today that Shevardnadze would not step down, because "It would mean the collapse of the entire country.''

Rustavi-2 was last in the news in July, when Georgi Sanaya, 25, a news broadcaster at the station was murdered. The killing led to a special national broadcast by the country's president, the cancellation of the president's scheduled trip to Azerbaijan, a minute of silence in Parliament and a crowd of mourners outside the television station. No one has been charged with the murder.

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