The Washington Post published an article titled "In post-Soviet Georgia,
democracy faces critical test" about a protest rally against prison
abuse in Tbilisi, Georgia on September 22, 2012. People rallied in Georgia
to demand the prosecution of top officials, who were fired in a prison abuse
scandal that threatens to unseat the governing pro-Western party in
the country's October 1 parliamentary election.
"Internationally, the government has been mostly viewed as
sure-footed, until last week when a scandal erupted over evidence of
systematic abuse and torture in the nation’s prisons. Videos,
broadcast on national television and made by an insider, showed guards
admitting a line of new inmates to prison — each methodically beaten,
one by one, with the casualness of getting their papers stamped —
while others showed prisoners sodomized with truncheons and
broomsticks, taunted as they cried or begged for mercy," the
article reads.
“They have accomplished many very good things, but they have failed to
build a democratic system and protect human rights. A small group of
people in the executive branch make all the decisions, and there is
no check or balance on this power,” the authors of the article cite
Tamar Chugoshvili, chairwoman of the Georgian Young Lawyers
Association.
