The symbol of the protest already exists and it is the image of a woman being attacked by water cannon while waving the European flag, an icon of a generation that does not bow to dictatorships.
Tbilisi rebels, where thousands took to the streets yesterday to say no to Putin and ask Europe to sanction the oligarchs who are obstructing Georgia’s European integration process. After Tuesday night’s clashes, protesters returned to Parliament yesterday to protest against the first-reading law on so-called “foreign agents” passed by the Assembly. A law rejected by the opposition and the EU is a means to restrict the activities of the media and NGOs along the lines of the law passed in Russia in 2012. If adopted, it would put Georgia, which has always been a balance between East and West, on the list of anti-democratic and authoritarian post-Soviet states like Belarus, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan.
In the evening, there were renewed clashes with police, who fired tear gas canisters into the subway, which has become a haven for protesters. According to the BBC, the crowd was ordered to disperse and some people were injured. «Protesting in this country is not easy, opponents are arrested, journalists too. And in recent weeks we have seen a crackdown that coincides with the government’s desire to please Putin,” Elene Khoshtaria, a member of the opposition European Georgia party, told Corriere in a phone call. His partner Zurab Japaridze, leader of the Girchi party, was arrested by the police. “They haven’t released him yet,” Khoshtaria adds, while protesters’ chants can be heard in the background. “The demand of the square is clear,” adds former MP Salome Samadashvili. “We call on the West and the United States to sanction the oligarchs who are preventing the Georgian people from taking the path desired by the majority. That is, the one that leads to Brussels». The link to the Euromaidan protests in Kiev in 2013-2014 with the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych is obvious. But the ruling Georgian Dream party, which backs the new law, says it wants EU and NATO accession and wants a pragmatic line in relations with Moscow, with whom Georgia went to war in the summer of 2008.
According to the Interior Ministry, 77 protesters were arrested in the incidents. 50 officers and civilians were injured in the clashes, the ministry added. But Giorgi Vashadze of opposition party Aghmashenebeli Strategy denounced “a disproportionate use of force against a peaceful demonstration,” while videos posted online showed arbitrary arrests and even demonstrators falling to the ground.
Tbilisi heats up as pro-Moscow propaganda resumes and Russian troops lay siege to Bakhmut in Ukraine. At the new demonstration in front of the parliament, Levan Khabeishvili, leader of the opposition party United National Movement, calls for daily protests. And then he publicly burns sheets with the text of the law requiring non-commercial companies with more than 20% foreign financing To as “foreign agents”. Sogno Georgiano President Irakli Kobakhidze promises that the debate for the vote on the second and third readings of the law will not take place before June pending an opinion from Parliament from the Venice Commission, the Commission’s legal advisory body. requested Council of Europe. But the tension doesn’t let up. It is also not enough that the President of the Republic, Salomé Surabichvili, who opposed the law, vetoed it: Sogno Georgiano, which has half of the seats in Parliament, could enforce the law anyway.
Tbilisi Square is calling. And Brussels, through the voice of EU Council President Charles Michel, reiterated that passing the law “is not compatible with the EU path hoped for by the majority of Georgians”. Instead, from Moscow came the venomous comment from Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova: “Now it’s clear why the United States isn’t in the European Union yet, this law has been in place here since 1938.”