The leader of the opposition party Za Georgia and former prime minister Giorgi Gacharia was attacked by a group of men on Tuesday evening. He was hospitalized with injuries to his face and head. the spokeswoman of the party told Reuters. The identity of the attackers is unknown, but the party blames the government’s Georgian Dream for the “coordinated attack” on Gacharia. TASR informs about it according to the Reuters agency.
The fight took place in the lobby of a hotel in the Black Sea city of Batumi, where Gacharia was attending a court hearing in the case of members of the party’s youth organization. “He was brutally beaten but survived,” said spokesperson and member of parliament Ana Buchukuriová. Gacharia wrote on Facebook that his condition is stable. According to doctors, he suffered a fractured nasal bone and a concussion. In the meantime, he was released from the hospital at his own request.
“This politically motivated attack is an obvious attempt to intimidate the opposition and suppress dissenting voices,” said the Za Georgia party in a statement quoted by the Interpress agency. Gacharia is a former minister of the interior. He was prime minister in the Georgian Dream government in 2019 and 2021. He resigned from this post and founded the opposition party Za Georgia.
Parliamentary elections were held in Georgia at the end of October. According to official results, the ruling Georgian Dream party, which the West accuses of being pro-Russian, won with 54 percent of the vote. In second place came the pro-Western Coalition for Change with 11 percent. The opposition did not recognize the election result and called the vote rigged.
Georgians have been organizing nightly protests in the capital Tbilisi and other cities since November. They are reacting to the government’s decision to stop accession talks with the European Union until 2028. According to Reuters, the pro-European demonstrations were met with heavy police intervention. Human rights groups say hundreds of people have been arrested and point to fighting. The government defends the police’s actions.
Reuters reminds that the leader of the largest opposition party, the Coalition for Change, Niko Gvaramio, fell unconscious in Tbilisi in December when the police knocked him to the ground during the arrest. He was later jailed for 12 days for petty disorderly conduct and disobeying the call of the police.
“Physical retaliation and incitement to violence against citizens by members of the Georgian Dream party have become part of the political scene,” the Georgian Association of Young Lawyers, which deals with rights, said in a statement on Tuesday’s attack on Gacharia.
