You're reading: Rallies against abuse of prisoners grow in Georgia

TBILISI, Georgia — Street protests against the brutal abuse of prisoners escalated Thursday in the Georgian capital, fueling anger against the government and possibly boosting support for the opposition in the runup to a tightly contested parliamentary election.

Two days after
television stations aired videos of guards beating inmates and raping
them with truncheons and broom handles, thousands rallied outside the
Interior Ministry’s headquarters and the Tbilisi
prison where the abuse occurred. The demonstrators, some carrying
brooms, demanded the resignation of the nation’s interior minister.

President
Mikhail Saakashvili has sought to defuse tensions by accepting the
resignation of a minister in charge of penitentiaries and completely
reshuffling prison personnel. But the simmering public anger threatens
to damage his party in the Oct. 1 parliamentary vote and may boost
support for the opposition Georgian Dream party led by billionaire
philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Saakashvili, who has led Georgia
since 2004, has remained popular thanks to economic reforms,
anti-corruption efforts and moves to integrate closer into the West. But
his image was dented by his handling of a disastrous war with Russia in 2008. The opposition has also accused Saakashvili of a systematic clampdown on dissent and independent media.

Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man who sold his extensive business assets in Russia to enter Georgian politics, said the videos had confirmed his longtime suspicions of the Georgian authorities’ brutality.

Inmate’s
mother Veriko Kapanadze recalled that her son looked scared and tense
when she last visited him in prison. “Now I understand why. It’s like a
Gestapo prison.”

Georgian prosecutors have arrested 12 prison
officials and Saakashvili has vowed that all those responsible will be
severely punished. At the same time, the Georgian Interior Ministry has
blamed Saakashvili’s political foes for staging the videos, claiming
prison officials were paid for orchestrating and filming the abuse by an
inmate with connections to Ivanishvili. Ivanishvili has rejected the
claim.

The prison abuse videos were broadcast by Maestro and
Channel 9 television stations; the latter belongs to Ivanishvili. They
said they got the videos from a prison official who has fled abroad.