Outraged Georgians slam fake Russian invasion report

OUTRAGED Georgians yesterday slammed a local television channel that sparked panic by broadcasting a faked report announcing that Russia had launched an invasion and the country’s president was dead.

The Georgian opposition condemned the newscast as a state-sponsored stunt aimed at smearing President Mikheil Saakashvili’s critics while the president himself added to the furore by appearing to defend the broadcast.

The report, aired Saturday night on privately owned Imedi television, said Russian tanks were headed for the capital Tbilisi, Saakashvili had been killed and that some opposition leaders had sided with invading forces.

“It was indeed a very unpleasant programme but the most unpleasant thing is that it is extremely close to what can happen and to what Georgia’s enemy has conceived,” Saakashvili said in televised remarks.

Local news agencies said the programme provoked alarm, a record number of calls to emergency services and multiple incidents of heart attacks and fainting.

The report showed footage taken from the August 2008 war that saw Russian troops pour into Georgia and bomb targets across the country.

A brief notice before the report said it was a “simulation” of possible events but the report itself appeared genuine and carried no warning it was a fake.

Opposition leader Nino Burjanadze – who was among those the report claimed had joined forces with Russia – said the newscast was government-sponsored propaganda.

“This government’s treatment of its own people is outrageous. I am sure that every second of this programme was agreed with Saakashvili.

Many people suffered psychological trauma,” Burjanadze, a former speaker of parliament who heads the Democratic Movement-United Georgia party, said.

“Every word about me was malicious slander and I will sue both Imedi television and the authorities,” she said.

Government officials denied any advance knowledge of the report and denounced it as irresponsible.

“The opposition is creating a myth that this programme was agreed with the authorities and trying to use that myth to its own ends,” the head of Georgia’s National Security Council, Eka Tkeshelashvili said.

“Of course this is completely untrue. This programme was an extremely unpleasant surprise to the authorities,” she said.

Imedi apologised for airing the fake programme, but not before outraged Georgians launched campaigns condemning the channel.

Officials in Russia were also quick to denounce the report as a government-organised provocation.