After overthrowing the communist regime and declaring its independence, Georgia began its struggle for establishing a democratic society. Many things have been changed in this sphere during the last 6 years (or during the post-totalitarian period) by the common effort of the democratic part of the Georgian population, different public organisations and representatives of the authority, but at present the Georgian population encounters a great deal of problems in connection with the questions of human rights. The most effective method of fighting with human rights violations is to reveal them, to create public opinion and thus influence the authority or its representatives in order to push them to eradicate particular instances of human rights violations.

The bulletin will be published monthly. On January 25, 1994, the Georgian authority joined an international pact on civil and political rights, which was adopted at the meeting of the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1966. Thus Georgia undertook observation of the principles and rules of the pact. It enters into the interests of both Georgia itself and of international cooperation. The struggle for civil and political rights in Georgia is a struggle for achievement of rule of law in the Republic. This bulletin is devoted just to this question.

The totalitarian, anti-democratic mentality still predominates among a great part of citizens of Georgia (as well as over the citizens of other post-communist countries). As a result they are not yet accustomed to the novelty of the principle of rule of law and the primacy of human rights and interests before state interests. Representatives of different bodies of the authority often benefit from this mentality of the society and guided by the so called "state interests" or private interests, they often proceed from expediency of fulfillment of the law, instead of the principle of rule of law. Thus we meet with the facts of violations of human rights and nihilistic attitude towards law both at low and high ranks of the authority. It is even more dangerous that for decades a considerable part of population believed that law is the instrument in the authority's hands to rule over the population, instead of a supreme category, which gives equal rights to both ordinary citizen and supreme ruler.

Our bulletin does not limit itself by giving particular facts of human rights violations. Its different issues will include interesting materials: different problematic questions connected with human rights will be discussed here (for example, whether death sentence should exist in Georgia, who may be called a political prisoner, the role of NGOs for human rights in public life, etc.); the bulletin will discuss the results of sociological research, it will publish interviews with those persons who are directly connected with the sphere of human rights, and theoretical materials devoted to these questions.

We do not express the interests of any political organization, and we take no part in political activity, though we cooperate with those persons or organizations who support the principles of the international pact on civil and political rights.

Unfortunately, because of lack of means, this bulletin is of limited circulation and therefore not intended for the broad masses. It is available only for the experts working in this sphere. Taking this fact into account, its form and contents are specific. We hope that in the future our bulletin will become available for the broad masses.