Seven days have passed this Thursday since the beginning of the protests against the government in the streets of Georgia. The decision of the local Executive, made up of members of the party Georgian Dream, to postpone its accession path to the European Union until at least 2028 has unleashed an unusual and enormous wave of indignation in Tbilisi, the capital. Since then, the nights in the political heart of this Caucasian republic have been marked by demonstrations in front of Parliament and clashes between participants and the police, who repeatedly used pyrotechnics against the security forces. The agents have responded with great harshness, using both tear gas as water cannons, and arresting opposition leaders.
According to independent journalists, the riot police have acted firmly even with peaceful activists. Georgian Dream has justified these measures and has even ordered the arrest of some opposition leadersas is the case of Nika Gvaramiaone of the leaders of United National Movementwhose lawyer reported that his client was beaten and even left unconscious. During the early hours of the morning, the police also broke into the headquarters of opposition parties such as Droa and Girchi. In addition to Gvaramia, police have arrested Aleko Elisashvili (from Strong Georgia) and Zurab Datunashvili (Coalition for Change) among others, within the framework of a vast repressive campaign against the opposition.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobajidze has condemned the “violence” and has assured that, when “weapons of violence” were confiscated from political parties, attacks on the police stopped. The president has also denounced that the process was “totally organized.” The opposition, on the other hand, has called the Executive “illegitimate”, and does not accept Sueño Georgiano as the winner of the recent elections last October. For this reason, they have called on their fellow citizens to take to the streets to demand new elections supervised by the international community.
Reaction from outside
The West has taken a dim view of the decision of postpone the European process in Georgia, something that has motivated Brussels to respond by withdrawing the financial support it was providing to Tbilisi. The EU itself has openly criticized both the pro-russian path of the Georgian Government, exemplified by laws similar to those of the Eurasian country, such as repression of protests of this week. Due to this geopolitical turn and the police response, different European countries have sanctioned Sueño Georgiano with travel bans to Europe for some of its most prominent representatives. Among those that adopted the sanctions were states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and later Ukraine, a country that is not yet a member of the EU, but which obtained candidate status for membership at the same time as in Georgia in 2023along with Moldova.
President Salomé Zurashvili has welcomed the sanctions. “I couldn’t have done better,” he said in reference to the punitive measures taken by the Government of Volodímir Zelenskiadding that Russia “wants to regain control of the Black Sea” by placing Georgia under its yoke. She has become one of the symbols of the opposition, and has announced that, although her term ends in December, she does not plan to leave office. For his part, the prime minister has criticized the measures and has accused the ukrainian authorities to receive orders from Washington. “They are not independent making decisions like that,” Kobajidze criticized. The same US has also reacted to the events in the Caucasian republic, suspending last Saturday the treaty of strategic partnership between the US and Georgia.
