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Police beat protesters in Georgian capital
Mon Jun 15, 2009 10:02am EDT
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By David Mdzinarishvili
TBILISI (Reuters) - Masked police beat dozens of opposition protesters in the Georgian capital on Monday in the latest flare-up during a weeks-long street campaign against President Mikheil Saakashvili, witnesses said.
Dozens of black-clad police officers armed with truncheons confronted a protest of about 50 people at Tbilisi's main police station demanding the release of six opposition activists detained since Friday, a Reuters photographer said.
He said several protesters and a photographer for the European Pressphoto Agency were severely beaten.
Police seized cameras from photographers and cameramen, including a Reuters photographer. The cameras were later returned but the Reuters photographer's images had been erased. Other photographers said their memory cards had been taken.
Tensions are running high in the former Soviet republic, after more than two months of opposition protests and roadblocks demanding Saakashvili quit over his record on democracy and last year's disastrous war with Russia.
The volatile South Caucasus country sits on Russia's southern border, at the heart of a transit region for oil and gas to the West.
"This is absolutely unacceptable," protest leader and former Saakashvili ally Nino Burjanadze said of the violence. "We demand a response from our Western partners, to give their assessment of the situation."
The opposition said that statements by several Western ambassadors on Friday, in which they criticized opposition protesters for throwing rocks and bottles at parliament deputies, had encouraged the government to take a hard line.
"The statements made by the U.S., French and Czech ambassadors clearly gave impetus to the authorities to act as criminals and bandits today," opposition leader David Gamkrelidze said.
CRACKDOWN
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that protesters were hampering traffic and resisted police efforts "to unblock the entrance to the police station and restore traffic movement." It said 39 protesters were detained.
Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze said police had acted inappropriately toward journalists. "It is our mistake. We admit it and apologize," she told a news conference.
Pro-opposition television stations Maestro and Kavkasia said they would temporarily halt broadcasting in protest.
Turnout at the demonstrations has waned, but dozens of mock prison cells erected around parliament continue to block traffic through central Tbilisi.
Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets dispersed the last mass demonstrations against Saakashvili in November 2007. Watched closely by the West, authorities are wary of taking a hard line again, but analysts question how long the stalemate can continue. Continued...
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