In the aftermath of the May 17 mob rampage against gay-rights activists in Tbilisi, public discussion in Tbilisi is focusing on church-state issues, especially the question of whether the Georgian Orthodox Church operates beyond the reach of civil law.
President Mikheil Saakashvili's opposition United National Movement was quick to describe their secretary-general's detention as a further step in the party's alleged ongoing harassment by Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili's government. Merabishvili, who served as interior minister from 2004 to 2012, is on a short-list of contenders that the party was considering for a primary for nomination as its candidate for this October's presidential election.
Ex-Health Minister Zurab Chiaberashvili, a former ambassador who was detained on May 21 together with Merabishvili on corruption and abuse of power charges, was offered bail of 20,000 lari (about $12,300), payable within 30 days.
Both men have denied the charges against them. Chiaberashvili is one of the few remaining governors loyal to Saakashvili.
The European Union pledged to cast a cautious eye on the proceedings against them. In a joint statement on May 22, the EU's chiefs for foreign affairs and neighborhood relations – Catherine Ashton and Stefan Fule, respectively – said that they “take a careful note” of the double detention.
Shouting “Kill them! Tear them to pieces!” a mob of several thousand mostly young men, but also robed priests and women in headscarves, broke through police lines to attack several dozen gay-rights supporters gathered in Tbilisi's central Freedom Square.
A raging mob in Tbilisi chased away a downtown rally designed to commemorate the May 17 International Day against Homophobia. “Kill them! Tear them to pieces!” yelled the agitated crowd as police struggled to evacuate a handful of gay-rights supporters from the Georgian capital's central Freedom Square.
A raging mob in Tbilisi chased away a downtown rally designed to commemorate the May 17 International Day against Homophobia. “Kill them! Tear them to pieces!” yelled the agitated crowd as police struggled to evacuate a handful of gay-rights supporters from the Georgian capital's central Freedom Square.
It was a scene of medieval mob violence, as thousands of Georgians -- mostly young men, but also robed priests and women in headscarves -- stormed through a police cordon and went pursuing the activists. “Where are they? Don’t let them leave alive!” screamed frenzied men, as they took over the square, outnumbering and overpowering police troops.
Police barely managed to herd some of the LGBT activists into municipal buses, before angry protesters surrounded the vehicles. The crowd hit, threw stones and followed the buses as they pushed their way out of the square.
The pursuit continued on the side streets. Just outside the square, a mob tried to storm a house, where several gay rights activists had sought refuge. “Drag them out, stomp them to death,” screamed one woman as she tried to push her way through a group of policemen, who wrestled with the mob at the entrance of the house.
Youngsters swore, beat and threw various objects at police officers, who eventually pulled the activists into a car. A stampede occurred as the mob tried to chase the car down the narrow street, with some falling into ditches.
At the different corner of the downtown, several activists sought asylum in a grocery store and police managed to fight off the mob that tried to break into the shop.
Very few civilians dared to speak against the violence. “Look at yourselves! You call yourselves Christians?” objected one elderly woman in tears, speaking from a balcony. “Go ahead, kill everyone you are told to hate in the name of God and national values.”
Prison may be just a click away for many Internet users in Azerbaijan now that the energy-rich, but rights-poor country has made online defamation and offensive languagea criminal offense. The move is seen by critics as an attempt to censor the Web ahead of this October's presidential election.
Human rights watchdogs have long maintained that Facebook-organized anti-government rallies, YouTube videos satirizing officials and other online activity have resulted in imprisonment of government opponents on various trumped-up charges. Now, they imply, prosecutors may not need to bother with tales of drugs or brawls to jail or fine critics.
What constitutes defamation or offensive language will be left to Azerbaijan’s government-loyal courts to decide. Judges can pick the preferred punitive measure from a list of punishment options for offline defamations and verbal abuse – a fine, corrective labor, or prison.
Rights groups have called on Azerbaijan to scrap the new law as a bad for democracy, something international watchdogs believe already is in short supply in the ex-Soviet republic.
"The authorities must not use the upcoming presidential election as a pretext to silence critical voices and a meaningful debate,” Amnesty International said.
Belarus’ leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka went down to Armenia this week to pick President Serzh Sargsyan’s brain about how to operate nuclear reactors.
That might sound like the beginning of an anecdote, but it's for real.
Belarus plans to build two nuclear power plants and, so, any safety tips from Armenia would be much appreciated, Lukashenka said on May 13 in Yerevan.
“You have serious experience in exploiting such facilities and we hope Armenia will be able to send at least a dozen good specialists so that they assist us in the initial stages of operating the under-construction power plants,” Lukashenka told Sargsyan, RFE/RL reported.
Armenia’s nuclear expertise comes in the form of a rusty, Soviet-era plant that huffs and puffs in the town of Metsamor, thirty kilometers west of Yerevan. Built in the 1970s, Metsamor has no primary containment enclosures to hold escaping radiation and sits in an earthquake and conflict-prone vicinity. The plant was put on the back burner during the devastating 1988 earthquake, but was reopened in 1993 as Azerbaijani and Turkish blockades starved Armenia of energy.
Citing safety concerns, the US and EU both have pled with the Armenian government to modernize the Russian-operated plant. Armenia plans to replace the plant with a modern facility soon, but, in the meantime, the tired plant continues churning out 405.7 megawatts of power, feeding some 40 percent of Armenia’s needs.
Nonetheless, Lukashenka is convinced he needs Armenia’s two cents on nuclear safety; even though the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which had a devastating effect on Belarus, might have taught him that Soviet-made plants do not provide examples of the best safety practices.
After weeks of suspense and guesswork, Georgia finally has a nominee for president from its ruling Georgian Dream coalition. To the fanfare in walks 43-year-old Education Minister Giorgi Margvelashvili.
Margvelashvili, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, may not cut as prominent a figure as the last three individuals who ended up becoming Georgia's president (in order of appearance: a nationalist dissident, a USSR foreign affairs chief and a pro-West revolutionary), but neither is the president’s office the desired job it used to be.
Constitutional changes, which go into effect after the October presidential election, will place key powers in the hands of Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, while the president, aside from the role of commander-in-chief, becomes largely a ceremonial head of state.
Fluent in English and Russian, Margvelashvili is mostly known in Georgia as the former rector of the private Georgian Institute for Public Affairs, a higher-education facility, and as a frequent commentator on politics. He has not been in public office long enough to succeed or to fail, and the biggest controversy involving him pales compared to the bare-knuckle battles of the past.
That said, Margvelashvili does not command a wide personal following, and, arguably, Ivanishvili could have found more popular candidates in his cabinet of ministers. Among those whose names Georgian media bandied about were soccer- star-turned-energy-minister Kakha Kaladze and Defense Minister Irakli Alasania.
Amid a growing awareness of Western-style civil rights in Georgia, journalists are wrestling with a thorny question: where is the line between reporting and social activism? A recent tussle in the Georgian capital Tbilisi between police and protesters illustrates the trouble that many have in answering.
California’s Fresno County has become entangled in a conflict from another world.
Late last month, on the eve of the April 24 anniversary of the 1915 slaughter of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, the county government felt the urge to weigh in on the decades-long dispute over the predominantly ethnic-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region and recognize Karabakh's independence from Azerbaijan. Soon enough, angry Azerbaijan, which has vowed to reclaim the territory, came knocking on the county’s door.
The Fresno Bee has the story:“The resolution [supporting Karabakh's independence], even if symbolic and from a seemingly irrelevant county government, undermines Azerbaijan’s sovereignty, wrote the nation’s officials in a recent letter to the county. The [county] supervisors’ support, they wrote, contradicts even the US government’s official position that Nagorno-Karabakh is rightfully part of Azerbaijan.”
But Fresno has snapped its fingers back at Azerbaijan, saying the energy power picked the wrong guy. “We will not be muscled by a well-funded lobbying effort by the Azerbaijanis," Supervisor Andreas Borgeas, who penned the Karabakh resolution, proudly commented to The Fresno Bee.
