“For years, the so-called NGOs have styled themselves as human rights defenders, and it has now been shown very plainly that they are nothing of the sort,” declared Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.

The Prime Minister was asked about the fact that, against the backdrop of the sanctions imposed on Imedi TV and PosTV, media organisations operating in Georgia, as well as other non-governmental organisations, had failed to state any position on the matter.

As Kobakhidze noted, what is visible is a very concrete and flagrant violation of one of the fundamental rights, freedom of the press, which is protected under Georgia’s Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, and other international instruments.

“This right has been violated in an extremely crude manner, yet the so-called rights defenders, in reality, NGOs, are not expressing any position on the matter. Everything speaks to how great a farce the NGO is. An NGO has but one function: it is an instrument of intervention in the internal affairs of a foreign country. It was precisely for this reason that we passed the law on transparency of foreign influence and demanded that NGOs submit financial declarations, so that everything would be known to the public, who the NGOs really are, how much funding they receive and for what purposes. Throughout all these years, these NGOs, these so-called rights defenders, have done nothing of benefit for this country; on the contrary, they have been in constant opposition to it.

When press freedom is violated, and the so-called rights defenders do not respond, that is the clearest possible proof of it. This is not merely a sign that someone is acting in bad faith; it is a sign that these particular individuals are simply foreign agents,” declared the Prime Minister.

Asked whether the NGOs’ desire to clear the field for media organisations that serve their interests was becoming apparent, Kobakhidze replied: “That interest naturally exists, though it is doomed to failure.”

“Their general interest is to damage one of the two political sides, though it is doomed to failure. There are opposition television channels whose ratings are at rock bottom. If one were to take the ratings of opposition channels and compare them with those of other national broadcasters, the difference is approximately fivefold or sixfold. This naturally vexes them, and they harbour the hope that by infringing the fundamental media rights of specific outlets, the partisan television channels might gain in strength. However, these sanctions will not curtail the fundamental right to press freedom for any television channel, not to any degree, not in any measure. The guarantor of this is the Georgian Government.

Since 2012, it has been our government that has been the guarantor of the protection of the fundamental right to press freedom in Georgia. We established media pluralism in this country, something that did not exist at all before 2012. Today too, we take responsibility for ensuring that full media pluralism is preserved and that the fundamental right to press freedom is protected for every television channel,” declared Irakli Kobakhidze.