For over two weeks, parents of children suffering from a rare genetic disease achondroplasia have been spending sleepless nights holding a nonstop protest outside the government administration building. The police do not allow them to pitch a single tent. They even seized a plastic bag the parents were using to shelter from heavy rain.
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The parents are asking for only one thing for their children – medicine, which has been approved and certified throughout the EU and US. The health condition of many of those children is critical, and the ‘revolutionary drug’ is only effective during growth, so every day without it is a day wasted.
“After the weather deteriorated we brought a tent and tried to erect it. The police snatched it out of our hands saying we don’t have the right to set it up and didn’t give it back. We asked which article forbids the pitching of a tent. They didn’t say, telling us to look it up ourselves.
We proposed to set the tent up in a different spot, further from the administration building, which they also rejected. We don’t want an altercation to break out and for anyone to get arrested so we stopped trying and continue to be exposed even during the cold and rain,” says one of the protesters, Makuna Gochiashvili.
Under the current legislation, setting up a tent is only prohibited if it obstructs a roadway, blocks a building, or causes disruption to the operation of an establishment.
The decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs even contradicts the Georgian judicial practice.
The placement of a tent during public rallies is considered within the constitutional rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.
In its verdict regarding the lawsuit of the members of Guerrilla Gardening on August 31, 2016, Tbilisi City Court ruled that the right to peaceful assembly and expression implies the right to choose the place, time, format, and motif of the assembly, and recognizes within the reasonability of erecting a temporary construction. With this ruling, the court granted the plaintiff’s request to set up a tent in front of the City Hall wherever they choose.
In the ruling of one case on February 9, 2020, the Tbilisi Court of Appeals explains that “the Constitution of Georgia allows the individual to choose the place, form, and means of expression according to personal views. Specifically, the law protects people’s right to peacefully express their ideas publically, through means, and at a place of their own choosing. Public expression not just through speech and chanting, but silence, or assembling temporary constructions is all allowed unless it goes against Georgian legislation.”
However, the Court of Appeals did not deem the actions of the policemen, who did not allow the plaintiffs to set up a tent, illegal, as they could not establish the site where the tent was going to be placed. The law prohibits gathering and rallying within a 20-meter radius of the entrance to the prosecutor’s office.
The reasoning by the Court of Appeals given in the above ruling was reiterated by the administrative panel of the Tbilisi City Court on December 3, 2018 - in the case concerned with allowing setting up a tent at the rally organized by Zaza Saralidze and Malkhaz Machalikashvili, fathers of the murder victims, in front of the parliament building in September of the same year.
But, in this case, the court did not evaluate whether the prohibition by the police was rightful or not, as the protesters were allowed to set up their tents during the proceedings. In the ruling, the court indicated that the claimants' interests had been fully satisfied so there was no longer any legal basis for the continuation of the dispute.
Public Defender of Georgia Levan Ioseliani states that parents of children with achondroplasia have the right to set up a tent near the government administration building.
“A tent, a makeshift, or anything that is not dangerous can be set up near the administrative body. This is a democratic principle and is how rallies are conducted in other countries. This is obvious. It does not require knowledge of law or much philosophy, every person has the right to do so, especially those who have been staying here through nights for almost two weeks, and the health condition of some of them has worsened,” said Ioseliani on May 1.
As of now, the police have not allowed the protesting mothers to set up their tents. The Ministry of Internal Affairs does not elaborate on what basis and why it restricts the constitutional right of parents.
