by Rex Wockner
International News Briefs
The gay group Inclusive Foundation was raided by police in Tbilisi, Georgia, Dec. 15 and the organization's leader, Paata Sabelashvili, was jailed for two weeks.
Gay activists in Western Europe say the group remains under surveillance and that its phones are tapped.
"We are very concerned with the way the police forces treated the staff of the Inclusive Foundation and with the damage they caused to the office," said Martin K.I. Christensen of the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. "The other worry is that Georgian police still monitor the office and that other leaders of the Inclusive Foundation, Tinatin Japaridze and Eka Agdgomelashvili, continue to be under police surveillance."
The raiding officers did not wear uniforms, identify themselves, produce a search warrant or explain the raid, activists said.
The officers confiscated cell phones and denounced members of the Women's Club, who were meeting at the time, as "perverts," "sick people" and "Satanists," activists said.
Police threatened to out the women and threatened to kill Agdgomelashvili when she would not stop demanding a search warrant and the officers' identification documents.
Inclusive Foundation leaders say they are constantly followed by "cars full of men without uniform" and that "one such car is permanently stationed outside the entrance to the house of one of the staff members."
