Georgia’s Congress gave final approval Tuesday to a controversial bill causing a series of tense protests in the capital Tbilisi, driven by fears that the law could push the country back into the Kremlin’s orbit.
President Salome Zourabichvili has promised to veto the bill. But Georgian Dream, the ruling party in Georgia since 2012, has enough votes to override her veto.
Both the opposition and the government see the passage of the innocuous-sounding bill titled “On the Transparency of Foreign Influence” as an important step in the history of Georgia, a mountainous country with 3.6 million people located in the middle of the Caucasus Mountains. .
The bill would require non-governmental groups and media outlets that receive more than 20% of their funding from foreign sources to register as “organizations benefiting foreign powers” and provide financial statements. annual review of their activities. Georgia’s Department of Justice would be given broad authority to monitor compliance. Violations will result in a fine equivalent to more than 9,300 USD.
Government officials and lawmakers from the ruling party say the draft law will strengthen the country’s sovereignty by making non-governmental organizations, which play a central role in political life, more decentralized. Georgia’s highest level, becoming more transparent to the public.
But the pro-Western opposition has spoken out condemn the law as a covert attempt to turn Georgia into a pro-Russian state.
Over the past month, thousands of people have protested the bill in Tbilisi and other cities across Georgia. As the crowd grew, police began using heavy-handed tactics to disperse them.
Riot police used tear gas, pepper spray and fists against protesters as some of them surrounded the Parliament building. Several protesters were beaten in tense confrontations, including Ted Jonas, a Georgian-American lawyer who has lived in the country since the early 1990s.
“They dragged me about 30 meters on the sidewalk, hitting and kicking me along the way,” Mr. Jonas said. a post On Facebook. “I ended up with a bloody nose, bruises from kicks or fists on my head, jaw, right eye socket and part of my left side.”
As Congress neared the end of reading the final bill, the confrontations continued to escalate. At least 20 protesters were arrested early Monday morning, said the police, including one Russian and two Americans. Group of students at leading universities in the country said on Sunday that they would go on strike to protest the bill.
Protesters called the bill a “Russian law,” saying it imitated a similar measure in Russia. Passed in 2012, Russia’s “foreign agents” law was also described by the Russian government as a transparency measure, but it quickly evolved into a restrictive measure. Heavy duty tool to stifle and stigmatize anti-Kremlin advocacy groups and media organizations.
“We have a lot of pro-Western NGOs and they are anti-West, they are pro-Russia,” Luna Ikovadze, 26, a protester, said of the government.
The Georgian government has denied accusations that the bill has anything to do with Moscow. Government representatives insist they are committed to pursuing the country’s widely held aspiration to join the European Union.
But in a recent speech, Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder of the Georgian Dream party, referred to the West as an enemy, not a friend. Speaking at a rally supporting the government in late April, Mr. Ivanishvili speak that NATO and the European Union are controlled by a “global war party” that sees “Georgia and Ukraine as cannon fodder.”
“They first involved Georgia in the confrontation with Russia in 2008,” Mr. Ivanishvili said, referring to the brief war between Moscow and the government in Tbilisi. “In 2014 and 2022, they pushed Ukraine into an even more difficult situation.”
Mr. Ivanishvili, a reclusive oligarch who made his fortune in Russia before returning to Georgia in the early 2000s, has accused Western elites of trying to foment a revolution against his party because the party refused to actively oppose the Kremlin after its invasion of Ukraine.
But some protesters say Moscow is a natural center of gravity for Mr. Ivanishvili and his party, which has ruled Georgia for nearly 12 years and intends to increase its political control of the country in the election. Coming in October.
“This is the only way for them to stay in power, with Russia,” said Ilia Burduli, a 39-year-old lawyer, at one of the protests. “This is the only way to be responsible forever.”
Irakli Kobakhidze, Georgia’s newly appointed prime minister, has described activists opposing the bill as arrogant and ignorant, brainwashed into believing the bill is linked to Russia.
“A confident person without knowledge and intelligence is worse than a Russian tank,” Mr. Kobakhidze said on Friday. a post On Facebook.
Some commentators have echo government’s argument, saying that the Western-funded NGO sector has an enormous impact on Georgia’s political life despite not being democratically elected. But they also say the new law won’t solve that problem.
European Union representatives and U.S. officials have criticized the law, saying it raises questions about Georgia’s democratic record.
On Saturday, Jake Sullivan, White House national security adviser, said that the US government was “extremely alarmed about the regression of democracy in Georgia”. IN a post on social media, Mr. Sullivan said that Georgian lawmakers face “an important choice – whether to support the EuroAtlantic aspirations of the Georgian people or pass a Kremlin-style foreign agents law. ”
Over the past few years, the West has been walking a tightrope in Georgia: on the one hand, it tries to encourage popular pro-Western aspirations among Georgians, and on the other hand, it tries its best not to alienate the ruling party and pushed it into the hands of the Kremlin. In December, the European Union granted candidate status to Georgia, a move widely seen as an effort to prevent the country from sliding into the Kremlin’s orbit.
But the balancing act has only become more difficult since Moscow invaded Ukraine, forcing many former Soviet nations to choose a side. The invasion also offers Georgia and several other countries a lucrative opportunity to help conduct trade between Russia and the West that is limited because of sanctions and other measures.
Mikheil Kechaqmadze, Georgian analyst said: “Georgian Dream recognizes that the focus of the West’s attention lies elsewhere, their focus on Georgia has weakened so the price they have to pay for imposing Using this law may not be too high. politics.
“They don’t want European integration,” he said in an interview. “By introducing the law, they want to sabotage it.”
