Police Detained Student Movement “Enough” Activists

(Tbilisi, June 12 2003, Civil Georgia) – 9 members of the Kmara (Enough) anti-governmental student movement were detained at today while holding a protest rally in front of the Interior Ministry in Tbilisi.

The Kmara activists were detained after the direct order of the Georgian Interior Minster Koba Narchemashvili, while the students were painting the walls of the Interior Ministry building with the word Kmara (Enough).

Interior Minister told the Kmara activists to stop painting and said it was “the hooliganism.” Then Narchemashvili ordered the police to detain the students.

“At the moment the detainees are kept in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They were arrested illegally,” Davit Zurabishvili of human rights advocacy NGO Liberty Institute told Civil Georgia.

The recent protest rally in Sagarejo, eastern Georgia triggered the confrontation between the Kmara movement and the law enforcers, when the Kmara activists painted the walls of the local police department with the works Kmara.

On April 14 about 200 students marched from Tbilisi State University to the State Chancellery, chanting their slogan “Kmara” (“Enough”) and demanding resignation of the “corrupt government and the President”.

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