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Recently, owners of various fake or real profiles in the social network Facebook have been intensively publishing posts containing fascist and xenophobic, hate speech and intimidating texts against the family members of Vitaly Safarov as well as against the Jewish people; they publish appeals to kill them citing Hitler, etc. Besides that, many fake groups with the photos of Vitaly Safarov were created in Facebok, where the killed human rights defender and his mother are extremely insulted and degraded. 

On March 6, 2022 the mother of Vitaly Safarov Marina Alanakyan appealed to the law enforcement bodies with regard to abovementioned systemic facts and requested to immediately start investigation. Nevertheless, neither the family nor Human Rights Center, which continues the defense of legal interests of Vitaly Safarov’s family, have been informed whether the investigation was commenced or not. 

It is alarming that police does not have immediately reaction to similar facts and hate motivated crimes because the weakness of the criminal law policy and inadequate approach to similar facts and crimes empowered xenophobic and fascist groups and hate speech that imposes particular responsibility over the state and respective government officials as their duty is to prevent similar crimes in the country. 

The State fails to implement its duties and does not adequately respond to unlawful and violent actions. The aggression and intolerance of the mentioned groups mostly targets non-dominant culture groups, ethnic minority communities and liberals. The practice of inadequate response to hate motivated crimes undermines the public order, encourages aggressive groups and empowers polarization of the society, as well as establishment of xenophobic, racial, homophobic and other hates. 

In parallel to that, HRC continues the defense of the legal interests of the victim’s assignee – the family of Vitaly Safarov in the Tbilisi Appellate Court and requests to determine the fact of racial, religious, national or ethnic discrimination in the imposed charge. 

On June 10, 2019, the Tbilisi City Court announced the verdict on the criminal case, and found the defendants guilty only for the group murder and did not identify the sign of ethnic intolerance in their action. In 2019, Human Rights Center published legal assessment of the case, where the court judgment was criticized and observed violations were analyzed, particularly those related with the qualification of the crime. 

Human Rights Center believes that the court judgment does not meet the standards established under the Article 259 Part I of the Criminal Code of Georgia (CCG). In order to establish correct judicial practice with regard to similar cases, it is essential that the higher instance of the court eradicated the miscarriages in the judgment. The evidence examined at the trials and testimonies of many witnesses clearly confirmed that the defendants belonged to the neo-Nazi group that means sharing anti-Semitist ideology. Although many witnesses mentioned it, when passing the judgment, the judge neglected general views of the defendants about Jewish people.

In this light, it is essential that law enforcement bodies immediately, impartially and comprehensively investigated the facts of assault on the family members of Safarov and all other similar cases in order to prevent similar incidents in future. It is important that the State acknowledged the need to implement not only negative but positive responsibilities too as well as its role in the eradication of the crimes, which creates threat to the pluralism and equality in the society, development of democratic and safe environment in the country. 

It is important that the Government made the criminal law policy more severe towards similar unlawful and violent actions and establish categorical approach to them because the existing weak policy has already contributed to the empowerment of xenophobic, fascist groups and hate speech that cannot prevent similar incidents in future. 

•    To conduct timely, impartial and unbiased investigative activities to identify the perpetrators and ensure their punishment in accordance with the law;

•    To give correct qualifications to similar crimes and in accordance with valid evidence determine the motive of intolerance in them.

•    When examining the cases on the crimes committed with alleged motives of racial, religious, national or ethnic intolerance, more attention shall be paid to relevant circumstances described in the case files – beliefs and views of the defendants for what the person/persons may commit a crime because of intolerance in future; 

•    The upper instance court shall thoroughly study the factual circumstances of the murder case of Vitaly Safarov to identify the miscarriages of the first instance court particularly in relation with the qualification of the committed crime and determine the motives of ethnic intolerance in them as it is proved by numerous evidence in the case files. 

Human Rights Center