39 families left on the street after eviction in Samgori

After being evicted from their homes on Tvalchrelidze Street, 39 families were left to spend the night on the street with their belongings. Those detained in Tbilisi reported police violence.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, the eviction of refugee families from Abkhazia from dilapidated buildings on Tvalchrelidze Street in Tbilisi's Samgori district began on the morning of July 24. During the protest, police detained 17 people on charges of disobeying security forces. Among those detained were both those evicted and activists who had come to support the people being evicted. Late in the evening of July 24, the National Bureau of Compulsory Enforcement reported that the eviction process was complete.

There are 39 evicted families left on Tvalchrelidze Street, they spent the night on their mattresses, sofas and chairs that they took out of their apartments. They demand that they be immediately provided with housing and that all 17 people detained on the day of the eviction be released. A representative of the owner company offered the evicted people money to rent housing for three months in the amount of 300 to 700 GEL, but it is impossible to rent housing in Tbilisi for this amount.

The detained activists are in pre-trial detention centers in Mtskheta and Kakheti. Lawyer Lasha Tkesheladze, who visited the Mtskheta detention center, said that the police used force against the detained activists without reason.

“One of them told me that when he was being put in the car, a police officer hit him in the face, there are signs of violence. They also physically dealt with another detained guy, dragged him by the hair to the car where they were supposed to put him, hit him in the ribs when they were leading him. He was transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs building, where he felt ill and an ambulance was called, he was diagnosed with various injuries, but this person was not taken to the hospital, he is still in the detention center. In addition, one of the guys (the police) mockingly called "princess": "Come here, princess, we must arrest you", "Take the princess away", this is how they wanted to publicly insult him," the Tbilisi_life Telegram channel quotes Tkesheladze as saying.

On the day of the eviction, the head of the patrol and post police service ordered his subordinates to “arrest everyone who raises their voices” and some police officers “carried out the order with enthusiasm,” Publika notes.

The buildings from which residents were forcibly evicted are guarded by people in masks and balaclavas who refuse to contact journalists and move away from the cameras. A representative of the company that owns the buildings called them representatives of a private security company, but refused to say which company they work for and on whose behalf they are monitoring the territory, Pirveli TV reports.

Evicted resident of Tvalchrelidze Street Inga Papidze told journalists that the people in black masks do not speak Georgian. “Several young people approached us, we tried to talk to them, wanted to ask them about something, but they did not speak Georgian, they spoke other languages. I do not know Chechens or Kazakhs, I do not know what country they are from, they spoke a language we do not understand,” she said on the air of the television company.

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