Journalists Held Rally to Support the Batumelebi

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On December 1 the rally to support the Batumi-based newspaper Batumelebi was held at the Amirani movie theatre in Tbilisi.

The number of the participants of the rally held under the initiative of journalists of various media outlets and bloggers topped 100. Together with journalists human rights watchdogs and the opposition representatives attended the event.

The posters wearing slogans such as "Freedom to Media," "Court Proceedings to be Launched on Pressure upon Batumelebi," "Fee Speech Persecuted" were displayed at the rally.

"We support our colleagues from Batumi as tomorrow we might also be the victims of

blackmailing," said one of the rally participants, in particular Tazo Kupreishvili, blogger (http://freelandia.wordpress.com/) and a journalist for the Rezonansi newspaper. The number of participants of the rally makes me hope our solidarity is going to be useful," he added.

According to the Batumelebi editorial staff on November 25 the law enforcers were trying to blackmail and win Tedo Jorbenadze, head of the journalism investigation team over, thus secretly planning to meddle into the editorial independence of the newspaper.

"I do believe this time the Georgian special services have applied the methods the Soviet KGB used to, in particular the ones related to sexual orientation due to the Georgian stigma. Jorbenadze was shown the photos featuring men. The police affirmed he was one of them. The journalist was told the police had video footage and unless he cooperated with them the video material would be sent to his parents and colleagues and uploaded on the Internet," reads the appeal by Mzia Amaglobeli sent to the international organizations on December 1.