W-a-a-a-i-t, this can't be happening! Saakashvile was educated in the US! HE SPEAKS ENGLISH! How can this be?
Rosbalt, 07/03/2004, 13:03 Georgia Media Feeling the Heat Attacks on the media have begun in Georgia. At first conducted quietly, they have grown noisier with the use of black-masked special police units. Officials deny that the raids represent a threat to free speech. 'We are simply battling corruption,' they say.
The battle against corruption is a sacred thing--when it is not selective. And when, almost simultaneously, the four highest-rated programs on the three leading television channels aren't shut down. And when the work of newspapers, magazines and print shops aren't interrupted, no matter to whom they belong.
In today's Georgia, which is already being openly compared to 1937 and the regime of Stalin, the shutting down of TV news and analysis programs might happen without causing a stir. But the prosecutor general and special police units had the temerity to burst in on Iberia television, a property of the wealthy and influential Omega company, owned by Nato Chkheidze and Zaza Okuashvili, husband and wife members of parliament. Omega properties also include a printery, Omega magazine, the newspaper New Epoch and a news agency. Omega is registered in Batumi. One of the chief sources of its income is producing and importing cigarettes.
Such a business, given Georgia's current tax laws, is bound to find the going less than smooth. The situation isn't 'smooth' for any big business, and legal violations are easy to find. But the fact that Omega's owners are outspoken in opposition to the Georgian government and are said to be 'investors in the regime of the head of Adjaria, Aslan Abashidze,' has weighed heavily on their guilt. Moreover, they control four types of mass information. While the TV channel is not particularly popular, it is 'critical' at a time when other, more successful TV companies keep away from oppositionist thinking.
Iberia is still 'broadcasting news and slanders,' but the newspaper, magazine and printery have been shut down. As has the tobacco factory, which, in Okuashvili's words, 'the special police turned into a firing range and destroyed equipment.' The masked officers did act very decisively. Not only did they storm the factory, which is on the same grounds as the printery, and physically pummel workers but kept them outside lying on asphalt for more than an hour. It is not hot here, and the workers were herded outside in T-shirts.
A couple of days later, when factory and printery employees tried to return to work, they were met by automatic fire from the special police, who fired 'into the air' for five minutes. The bullets somehow ruptured a natural gas line and tore into the Omega flag. Nato Chkheidze says the firing was not into the air and that people were lucky to be alive.
Okuashvili noted that Omega employs several thousand workers in job-starved Georgia.
Meanwhile, the editor of Omega magazine has launched a hunger strike, protest meetings have been held, and Okuashvili and Chkheidze have sought, unsuccessfully, a meeting with Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili.
What have they been looking for in Omega's offices in various regions of Georgia and at the TV station? They were after--and have found, according to the prosecutor, Irakly Okruashvili--seven forms for the production of fake cigarette tax stamps. Omega's owners disclaim this as fantasy and say no one has seen the alleged forms. Whether the search turned up contraband cigarettes is not known. Currently, Georgia has instituted a search for four Omega employees believed to be hiding in Adjaria.
Opposition politicians have reminded those now in power of the incredible protests that arose when the Security Ministry under former President Shevardnadze sought to check the papers of Rustaveli 2 television. Half the city of Tbilisi protested, and there was almost a revolution. 'But those were different times,' opposition figures sigh.
Rustavi 2, incidentally, played a leading role in the so-called 'velvet revolution of roses.' After the revolution, the channel regularly ran a commercial, proclaiming itself 'victorious television of a victorious people.' The commercial disappeared not long ago along with the popular news-analysis program, 'Nightly Courier.' It is true that the latter returned to the air a few days ago, slightly altered. As the Georgian newspaper Aliya wrote, 'The 'Courier' staff have left the revolutionary train: either voluntarily or by force. Television reporters are preparing to strike. One of the reasons-the strict censorship of TV.'
As for one of the main heroes of the revolution, television's Kitsmarishvili, he recently became president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Georgia. The election essentially offered no choices. The one remaining official competitor for the position withdrew his candidacy a day before the vote. The long-term president of the Chamber had been, of course, Eduard Shevardnadze's son-in-law, Guram Akhvlediani.
Quoting again from Aliya, the paper said it had learned from reliable sources that Akhvlediani had given up the post only under political pressure. It's said that the prosecutor's office is interested in the port of Potiе, to which Akhvlediani has a direct connection.
While opposition politicians grumble about the situation that has taken shape in the country in the wake of the revolution, some journalists are trying to do something about it. Specifically, the groups, Free Press and the Regional Press Association, have published an appeal to the president, the speaker of the parliament and Georgia's prime minister. It declares that the struggle against corruption is understandable and welcome but that television should not become its victim. Situations in which special police storm onto television cannot be justified under any circumstances, it said.
The appeal is likely to be a voice in the wilderness. A day ago, Prosecutor General Okruashvili said the raids were legal. Moreover, he let it be known that, if the situation warrants, harsher measures are possible.
Irina Dzhorbenadze, Rosbalt, Tbilisi Translated by Howard Goldfinger