The violent transfer of the former pro-Western leader, on hunger strike for forty-three days, towards a prison hospital shocked the opposition, but also the EU and the United States.
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Images, from prison services surveillance cameras, turn loop on social networks in Georgia. A video broadcast Thursday, November 11 shows the former transfer of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, since his prison from Rustavi, where he was incarcerated since the 1 October on his return from exile to a hospital Prison in Tbilisi, the capital. We see the leader of the opposition, on hunger strike for forty-three days, dragged out of the building without several men inside the building and deposited in his cell, the upper bare body. “Bring me back to jail in Rustavi! I refuse the medical procedures. You are the slaves of Putin, launches the former leader to the guards. I do not want to calm down, how do you want me to calm down?”
Mikheil #Saakashvili Was Taken to #Gldani Prison Hospital by Strength, Footage Released by the penitiary service SH … https://t.co/jfhm0wz09k
The pro-Western leader’s treatment of the “Rose Revolution”, a peaceful movement that has driven the Postovietal elites in 2003, shocked beyond the circle of his faithful – estimated at 20% of the population. Friday, the ambassador of the European Union in Georgia, Carl Hartzell, described the dissemination of this video by the special penitentiary service of “very debatable and regrettable” and called upon to “enforce fundamental rights, including those of the Privacy and dignity “.
For their part, the United States urged the authorities to “immediately take steps to ensure that Mr. Saakachvili’s mental health and medical needs are insured” and urged the Georgian government to “properly treat it and with dignity, in accordance with international standards and Georgian law “. In Ukraine, where in exile Mr Saakachvili lived, President Volodymyr Zelansky denounced “disproportionate coercive measures” against a Ukrainian citizen – former Georgian president has been a Ukrainian nationality since 2019.
Amnesty International also went alarmed, denouncing a “violent transfer” and “supposed threats” on the former president, “deprived of dignity, intimacy and adequate health care”. “It looks like a political revenge,” added the human rights NGO.
Affairs to democracy
This episode throws a new shadow on Georgia, which has long been an example in terms of democratic transition within the post-Soviet area. The European Union and the United States has spent billions of dollars for more than twenty-five years to support this effort and help it out of the broth of Russia. But for a year and the contested elections of October 2020 – won by little by the ruling party, Georgian dreams – Georgia goes from crisis in crisis, while the abuses of democracy multiply. As such, the treatment reserved for the former president is closely monitored by Brussels and Washington.
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