The UN human rights chief called on Georgia on Friday to prosecute prison officers caught
on videos torturing and raping inmates, a scandal that has broken out a week before a national election.
Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said authorities in the former Soviet republic must comply with
international laws that banned torture.
“We call on the government to ensure that all allegations of such human rights violations, and not only the ones exposed in
these videos but?others that have been taking place, are promptly and impartially investigated.
“And?that perpetrators are brought to justice,“ Pillay's spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing in Geneva.
Demonstrators took to the streets of Tbilisi and other towns this week after footage showing the torture and rape of inmates
in the capital's main prison was aired by two television channels supportive of the opposition.
Interior Minister Bacho Akhalaia resigned on Thursday as President Mikheil Saakashvili sought to soothe the protests.
“These videos are truly shocking, they show prisoners being physically and sexually assaulted, being humiliated and being verbally abused by prison officers,’’ Colville said.
The UN rights office welcomed Saakashvili's condemnation of the abuses and his government's pledges that they will be
investigated, and voiced hope it would be “swiftly translated into effective and transparent action''.
Georgia has ratified the Convention against Torture, as well as its protocol allowing national and international experts to make unannounced visits to detention facilities, Colville said.
“Concerns about ill-treatment of prisoners in Georgia have been raised at?various UN human rights?over the years, as well as consistently in reports of Georgia's own ombudsman Georgy Tugushi,’’ he said, referring to the former ombudsman who was
named prisons minister on Thursday.?(Reuters/NAN)