GEO
Experts and lawyers of the Union "Century 21" have started the work on studying Hate Crimes problem in Georgia. The work envisages monitoring of hate crimes incidents throughout the country and on the basis of collected data/statistics will be produced the report. The working group members cooperate with international organisations having experiences in the field of hate crimes issues. A very important step in combating hate crimes is cooperation with relevant state structures.
Since June 2005 the working group on studying the hate crimes functions at the organisation. The importance of this initiative is caused by its long-term impact on stability, social integration and civil awareness of population. It is our attempt to address the phenomena of hate crimes in Georgia. While choosing the issue of hate crimes we guided by its sensitivity nowadays.
The target group can be anyone from those who are different and as usual hate crimes are liable to inflict considerably greater emotional and psychological distress upon their victims than similar non-bias offenses. It is well-known that hate crimes hurt more. Taking into account the fact that perpetrators are motivated to act against an individual or his/her property in whole or part, because of a real or perceived membership of a group, hate crimes communicate a message to a wider group or community.
If one says that there is no hate crime in Georgia he/she recognizes the fact that no one is discriminated because of his/her difference and the diversity as one of the main characteristic for democratic societies is really respected and guaranteed in Georgia. But having a rich experience of working on human rights monitoring, we realized that people belonging to various minority and disadvantaged groups do not feel secure, moreover, they are discriminated (both physically and morally) because of their real or perceived ethnic, religious, sexual, gender and social backgrounds.
There are a lot of organisations both national and international, who indicate publicly about the violation of freedom of religion or belief, right for freedom of expression, right for freedom of conscience and etc, but the only recently has started to consider such facts as hate crimes.
It should be mentioned that hate crime has a wide definition covering various forms of violence: offences against the person: (physical assault and battery, threats and insets, abusive language/hate speech, incite to hatred) and property offences (damages of the places of worship, interrupt the religious service and etc).
The Union "Century 21" conducts periodic analysis and reporting on recent amendments and legal initiatives related to the freedom of religion and belief. The latest report "Registration of Religious Organisations in Georgia" was published in June 2005.
In 2002-2003 the Union "Century 21" provided legal consultations to the victims of religious violence, included free of charge legal aid and the representation at courts.
In 2002-2003 experts employed at the project For the Freedom of Religion and Belief organized radio talk-shows on various topics related to the problems of freedom of religion and belief. For the talk-shows were invited local experts and human rights defenders, as well as representatives of relevant state structures.
International Conference: "Religion, Law and Tolerance in Georgia: International Standards and Domestic Needs" was held on 6-7 December, 2004 in Tbilisi at Tbilisi Marriott. The conference was supported by the OSCE/ODIHR, Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief and BYU International Centre for Law and Religion Studies.
The information about the work already achieved and the problems identified has been presented at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting from 19-30 September, 2005 in Warsaw, (Poland).