"“The reality is that the Saakashvili government is the fourth one-party state that Georgia has had during the last 20 years, going back to the Soviet period,” he said. “And nowhere has this been more apparent than in the restrictions on media freedom.” In its most recent report, Freedom House, a human rights research group based in New York, ranked Georgia, in terms of press freedom, on a level with Colombia and behind Nigeria, Malawi, Indonesia and Ukraine — the last a NATO aspirant, like Georgia. A 2008 State Department report on Georgia’s democratic progress said that respect for freedom of speech, the press and assembly worsened during the 2007 crisis and that there continued to be reports of “law enforcement officers acting with impunity” and “government pressure on the judiciary.”"