It couldn’t have come at a worse time with all three republics in the South Caucasus gearing up for elections to be held next year. Georgia, considered a beacon of [relative] democracy in the region until today, has set an unfortunate precedent given that the opposition in all three countries will protest leading up to the respective votes as well as afterwards. Even the November 2003 Rose Revolution that brought the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, to power was peaceful in comparison to crackdowns by the authorities in neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Today, that all changed with the ironically entitled Steady State publishing a post simply entitled “Crazy in Georgia…” and a link to coverage from TOL Georgia. The two blogs were both established by Transitions Online and in particular, TOL Georgia is a welcome addition to blogging in the region. It’s coverage of the events as they unfold has been exemplary with recent updates now reporting attacks on the independent media in the country. Photographs recording scenes in downtown Tbilisi, some of which are posted here, are already up on Flickr courtesy of Davit Rostomashvili.

Following posts about Kavkasia TV and Imedia TV being taken off the air, TOL Georgia draws a frightening conclusion.

The Imedi TV journalists were threatened with force, kicked out from the TV station and had their mobiles phones seized.

[…]

A person was just beaten up by the additional internal affairs troops entering the TV station…

In how many democratic countries this happen???

Probably Imedi TV will be unveiled as Russian traitor TV… Shameful. This starts to look like clear-cut dictatorship…

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.