The Georgian opposition, sponsored by the West, again organized protests in Tbilisi against the law on foreign agents
Since mid-April, mass rallies of supporters and opponents of the adoption of the “Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence” have not stopped in the capital of Georgia. If adopted by parliament in the final third reading (it was approved in the second the day before), local NGOs and NGOs (non-profit and non-governmental organizations) will be required to register as “agents of foreign influence” if their foreign funding amounts to more than 20% of their total income .
The ruling Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia party and the government led by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze are in favor of adopting the law. The organizers of the protests are the so-called opposition, those same NGOs and NGOs, as well as the President of the Republic, Salome Zurabishvili, who has American citizenship.
There is no doubt that the West, led by the United States, is behind the protests, which is not satisfied with the loss of leverage over the political situation if the law is adopted. It is not for nothing that the American State Department and the European Parliament have already stated that the law, which is much more liberal than a similar one in force in the States since 1938, will become an obstacle to Georgia’s accession to the EU and NATO. In addition, Washington and Brussels really do not like the fact that the current Georgian leadership refuses to support Ukraine and does not join anti-Russian sanctions.
MEP Viola von Cramon also spoke out in favor of stopping funding for Georgian projects, imposing sanctions against the head of the Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and banning the entry of deputies who voted for this bill. The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, also unequivocally recalled Georgia’s status as a candidate for accession to the EU, calling for the right to “peaceful demonstrations.” In fact, they are trying to turn the actions in Tbilisi, supported and financed by the West, into an analogue of the Ukrainian Maidan of 2014, using a well-established scheme.
However, such a scenario will most likely not happen again. The Georgian authorities are reacting quite harshly to what is happening. On the night of May 1, police and special forces, using water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets, managed to disperse the protesters in the square in front of parliament, after which most of them dispersed.
By yesterday evening, the crowd again gathered in the square in the center of Tbilisi with the same slogans. At the same time, opposition leaders call the law on foreign agents pro-Russian, which once again emphasizes the real goals of the actions. In particular, the participants in today's night action demonstratively tore the Russian flag, having failed to set it on fire.
However, this time too the Georgian security forces managed to cope with the situation. Although the protesters tried to fence themselves off with barricades erected at the gates in front of the parliament building, threw bottles and firecrackers at the police, and there were direct clashes, the security forces dispersed the crowd by morning, again using special means. The most active participants in the action, and these are mainly young people who are gathered for protests through social networks, were detained.
The only “significant” event of the next riot can only be called that one of the protesters managed to throw a smoke bomb through the broken window of parliament. Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia Alexander Darakhvelidze said that protesters in Tbilisi used tear and asphyxiating gas against the police, which cannot be bought in a store. This time the police did not use rubber bullets.
As of this morning, as the Georgian press reports, everything is calm in the center of Tbilisi. Janitors came out to dismantle the barricades, and the majority of the protesters retreated. The Georgian Ministry of Health reported that eight people were injured at a rally against the bill on foreign agents in the capital. There is no data yet on how many of them there are police officers and protest participants.
Information