Women’s Movement Calls on President to Dismiss Her Parliamentary Secretary
By Tea Mariamidze
Monday, December 24
Women’s Movement and part of the non-governmental organizations held a protest rally at the Presidential residence on Atoneli Street, asking for the dismissal of President Salome Zourabichvili’s Parliamentary Secretary, Dimitry Gabunia.
This is not the first time the NGOs are against of Gabunia’s appointment on the post by the new President. Earlier this month they released a statement reminding Zourabichvili that Gabunia made inappropriate and unacceptable statements while commenting on the case of Zviad Devdariani, the head of a prominent Georgian NGO CIDA after allegations of sexual harassment and assault emerged against him.
Gabunia was Devdariani’s lawyer. He was claiming that his defendant did not do anything “what everyone else does.”
“Shall we prohibit personal messaging in the country? Where is the line between harassment and private communication? This is the thing that should be defined and not what Devdariani did. What did he [Devdariani] do which any of us has not done?” Gabunia stated when he was defending the interests of Devdariani, who was found guilty in sexual harassment into three cases by the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia.
Participants of the rally say that Gabunia's statements about Devdariani's case were equivalent to the normalization of the sexual harassment problem.
The rally participants attached a banner to the presidential residence with the inscription “Take Women’s Side” and also #metoo.
"Dimitry Gabunia is a man who expressed his position towards sexual harassment and in fact normalized the problem that women have been protesting for months. Such a man works at the Presidential Administration now. We request from the President to remove Gabunia from his post,” Ida Bakhutadze, one of the members of the Women’s Movement told the media.
She also called on the president to meet women and listen to the problems they face nowadays.
“We have a lot of problems and need support from the president and working with her on these issues,” she added.
