Georgian Prison Reform Protests (2012)
Tue Sep 18, 2012
Image: Georgian students protest against prison abuse
On this day in 2012, footage of penitentiary guards torturing detainees at Gldani Prison in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital city, were broadcast on television, leading to weeks of revolutionary protests and widespread prison reform.
One video showed a group of uniformed officials brutally beating a prisoner to the ground as other inmates waited, heads bowed in line. Another video showed multiple guards sodomizing a prisoner with police batons and a broomstick.
That evening, thousands of Georgians took to the streets in protest of the abuse. The protests went on for weeks and took on an anti-government character, supporting the political opposition, the Georgian Dream Coalition.
On October 1st, 2012, the governing United National Movement suffered a landslide defeat to the Dream Coalition in the parliamentary elections. The new administration promised to improve the penal system and prison conditions.
In 2013, over the span of three months, the newly elected government granted large-scale prison amnesty reducing Georgia's 24,000-person strong prison population by half.
- Date: 2012-09-18
- Learn More: libcom.org, www.theguardian.com.
- Tags: #Protests.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
