As I know Greek diaspora in Georgia was one of those that begun complaining of aggression form local nationalists. As a result of it more than 10 people were killed. It’s no single fact of minority groups rights violation in Georgia. Some people are even afraid to talk about it because of new power in Georgia. Well, I think that new Tbilisi policy is not correct and HRW and Amnesty International need to draw international attention to it. I suppose everybody knows that Saakashvili came to power on the wave of nationalism and now he encourages these moods in Georgia to stay in power. The fact is that Georgian people didn’t see anything special after his rising, any steps towards democracy so to say. Economy is broken and Saakashvili needs to turn his peoples’ attention away from the problems in social sphere. It’s a pity in any case that people like you and me suffer because of a tyrant.

I wouldn t blame Sakhasvili if the economy in Georgia is broken.
He inherited a broken country with 3 independist republics, he effectively inherited a terrible situation to deal. Plus the chechen rebels enetering the georgian territory, well, we cannot Sakhasvili for it, because during the Shevardnaze government it was much worse.
About abuses of power and human rights violations, well, It would be very disappointing if this man would not better than his predecessors, but I guess a corrupted and undemocratic country cannot be transformed into a perfect democracy only with a new president or fair elections. It takes time to unroot all the problems and during this process sometimes abuses are committed.
But if you are right about this man (only time will say that) I personally ( and many other with me) would be very disappointed, because the impressions I had gotten from him were good.Also for georgians it would be a terrible news, because they would lose the trust in democracy and politicians at all.

Max,

Here is some evidence for you not to label all governments as FREE vs. NON-FREE. It is more complex than that.

In fact I regard Georgia as a partly free country in a scale from 1 to 7 it gets 3 and 4.
Even during Shevadnadze presidency, I have never put Georgia into the not free countries, I have copies of teh rankings since 1999 and the worst Georgia got (not free)was even before, during the Gamsakurdia 's regime. With Shevardnaze the bottom in my ranking for Georgia was 5 and 4 (political freedoms and civil rights). Please Victor note that civil rights rankings are , in my opinon, at the same level of before (during Shevardnadze presidency), so I am not amongst the incompetent and ignorant people who think "new government,new elections, eveything perfect". I am always keeping monitoring, every day,for each country.