Georgia - Alerts
Viktor Lazic was detained on 3 September on the border between Georgia and South Ossetia and is now being held in solitary confinement.
IPI is concerned about the ambiguous circumstances surrounding the arrest of Irakli Gedenidze, Giorgi Abdaladze and Zurab Kurtsikidze, and calls on the government to lay out its evidence in a clear manner or release the photographers.
Journalists were verbally and physically attacked in the ensuing melee, cameras and video cameras were seized or destroyed and some reporters were arrested without justification.
Giorgy Popkhadze said that Georgian journalists and human rights activists had recently visited him, bringing materials on repression and killings in Georgia.
Journalist Vakhtang Komakhidze recently returned from South Ossetia where he was producing a documentary on the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict.
When journalist Tedo Jorbenadze refused to divulge information about "Batumelebi" newspaper, law enforcers threatened to blackmail him.
Media groups are calling for an end to war propaganda and concrete actions to promote dialogue and confidence between Russian and Georgian journalists.
WAN-IFRA calls on the de facto president to ensure that the conviction of journalist Anton Kriveniuk is overturned and that libel is decriminalised.
According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, its Tbilisi bureau chief is facing up to three years in prison if convicted on a forgery charge.
A criminal case was opened by prosecutors against journalist Anton Krivinyuk, who published an article criticising authorities and the president.
The exact circumstances that led to journalist Shalva Ramishvili's arrest remain unclear, said IPI.
The leader of a journalists' union was beaten at a protest rally on 15 June 2009.
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a 9 September 2008 CPJ press release:
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is an 8 September 2008 CPJ press release:
(RSF/IFEX) - Three journalists - Giga Chikhladze, correspondent of Russian "Newsweek" and head of Alania TV, Alexander Klimchuk, head of the photo agency Caucasus Press Images and correspondent for the news agency Itar-Tass, and Stan Storimans, cameraman for the Dutch TV station RTL-4 - have been killed since fighting began in Georgia on 8 August 2008. The death of a fourth journalist, a Georgian, and his driver, reportedly in the bombing of Gori on 12 August, has not been confirmed.
(IRFS/IFEX) - IRFS condemns the opening of gunfire by Russian soldiers on a television crew from the Azerbaijani station ANS TV and Turkish journalists in Gori on 14 August 2008. According to ANS, on 14 August Russian tanks blocked all entrances to Gori. Russian armed forces did not permit the journalists, who are covering the Georgia-Russia conflict, into the city and, by force, took reporting equipment away from several journalists.
(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) - The following is a 14 August 2008 ARTICLE 19 press release:
(IPI/IFEX) - The following is an IPI press release:
(RSF/IFEX) - RSF condemns the many violations of online freedom of information that have been perpetrated since the outbreak of fighting in the Georgian province of South Ossetia on 8 August 2008, including the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on many Georgian websites, in which the servers they use are overloaded and crashed by millions of connection requests.
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a 13 August 2008 CPJ press release:
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