U.S. Supports Peaceful Protests In Georgia, Urges Against Violence
The United States on Tuesday expressed support for the ongoing peaceful protests in Georgia against a Kremlin-inspired law that could be used to label political opponents as "foreign agents", and urged against any steps that would turn the protests violent, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.
"... We certainly support what in the United States would be an expression of the people’s rights under the First Amendment to peacefully protest and demonstrate. Our call and our push, of course, continues to be that they be peaceful and certainly would condemn any steps that are taken for these kinds of protests to become violent," State Department's Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told TURAN correspondent during daily briefing.
Patel went on to reiterate Washington's assessment of the reintroduced Foreign Agents Bill as “deeply problematic and inconsistent with what one would think [are Georgia’s] EU aspirations.”
"You have to remember we’re talking about something that cracks down on media organizations, civil society organizations, and other things," he explained.
Politics
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The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OPHRD), a joint program of the World Organization against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), has called for the urgent release of activist Rufat Safarov from prison in Azerbaijan. It has launched a campaign in support of the Azerbaijani human rights defender. https://www.omct.org/en/resources/urgent-interventions/arbitrary-detention-and-judicial-harassment-against-rufat-safarov
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This year, the laureate of the annual Nargiz Prize, awarded for efforts in the fight for democracy, was Akif Gurbanov, chairman of the board of the Resplatforma (Platform of the III Republic) movement, who is under arrest.
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The U.S. will prohibit the issuing of visas for nearly a dozen more individuals responsible for undermining democracy in Georgia, bringing the total number to over 100, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.
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The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has expressed condolences to the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, following the tragic incident in the city of Magdeburg. "We are deeply shocked by the news of the deaths and injuries resulting from the tragic incident that took place at the Christmas market in Magdeburg," the message reads.
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