Posted on 01/19/2005 12:10:23 PM PST by jb6
One year after the media played a crucial role in bringing Mikhail Saakashvili to power in Georgia, the freedom of the press is under attack in the tiny nation as those critical of authorities are coming under increasing pressure to toe the official line.
Many Georgian journalists say that power has turned Saakashvili, a 36-year-old US-educated lawyer who led last year's peaceful "rose revolution," into an authoritarian leader who has no qualms about bullying the press.
"I do not recognize the Saakashvili I knew one year ago. Since he became president (last January), it has become impossible to write articles criticizing the authorities," said Revaz Okruashvili, an editor of independent regional newspaper Khalkhis Gazeti.
The 55-year-old was arrested during the summer for alleged drug trafficking. Following an intense media campaign, he was released three days later.
"I was facing from six to 13 years in jail, and overnight, this turned into a 50 lari (25 dollar, 19.4 euro) fine, which in the end I did not even have to pay!" Okruashvili said.
"One local official confirmed to me later that they didn't like my articles about Saakashvili's local representative," Okruashvili said. "But I'm not going to stop."
Margarita Akhvlediani, a regional editor with the Tbilisi office of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which defends journalists operating in difficult environments, said the authorities were using worrying methods to pressure media critical of the government.
"Drugs are planted in journalists' offices, journalists receive threats over the phone, 'enemy' journalists are denied access to information, anything goes," she said, denouncing "an extremely dangerous trend."
Political television programs have disappeared and many independent media have found themselves under investigation for financial improprieties.
For example, in July tax police visited a small opposition television channel called Kavkasia, threatening to shut it down unless it paid its back taxes of 14,000 dollars within five days.
The channel paid back part of the sum and today is back on the air, though its broadcasts have been reduced considerably.
"Why are they piling up the pressure on this channel while others run much larger debts?" said the Internews media rights watchdog, in an allusion to the Rustavi-2 television channel.
Rustavi-2, which was instrumental helping Saakashvili lead the "rose revolution" last year and continues to back the president, currently owes the government 4.8 million dollars.
The pressure has created a chilling effect among media outlets, like the Georgian Times.
In mid August, the opposition newspaper was visited by six armed tax policemen, who seized financial documents.
"Our newspaper was cleared of any wrongdoing, but now my journalists are afraid to write investigative stories," said Editor Zviad Poshkhua.
Several journalists have been brutalized throughout the country. One of them, who edits a newspaper called Objectives in eastern Georgia, identified one of his assailants as a member of Saakashvili's party, said a report by press freedom organization Article 19, published recently.
The report also noted that the managers of several media had resigned and were replaced by government sympathizers -- the new head of Rustavi-2, for example, is a former deputy foreign minister.
Critics often accuse the station, like other media who supported the rose revolution, of exercising too much self-censorship, a charge it does not deny.
"Rustavi-2 took part in the revolution so it is considered part of the new power and the leaders of Rustavi make no difference between the editorial line and their own interest," said one of the channel's star anchors, Dato Kikalishvili.
But he said the policy would not last.
"Our new head promised to restore Rustavi-2 as it once was," a channel that freely criticized the government, he said.
The pan-European Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)'s press freedom czar, Miklos Harazsti, also said during a recent visit to Tbilisi that the present situation was but a "temporary crisis."
The Paris-based press freedom watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres ranked Georgia 94th among 166 countries for its press freedom record, down from 73 the previous year.
He better be careful, those who help you get where you are, may help you back out if you try burning those bridges.
ping
Oh no Saakashvili is cracking down on drug dealers and turning his counrty into a police state, just like "nazi" Yushchenko and "fascist" Putin.
Only you would consider planting evidence to shut up the media as cracking down on drug dealers. Only you would side with anti-media or anything else, selling your soul to whom ever as an opportunist, to get at your obsession with Russia.
Yeah, right. Tell us, jb6, great lover of the MSM, how all the stories of Putin cracking down on Russian media are CIA neocon lies.
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