Pro-EU membership rallies across Georgia enter second week

Mass protests in Georgia sparked by the government’s decision to suspend negotiations on joining the European Union have entered a second week, with police cracking down on protesters with increasing force.

Riot police have used water cannons and tear gas to try to break up the nightly rallies and beat scores of protesters, many of whom threw fireworks at officers and built barricades on a central boulevard in the capital Tbilisi.

“I have covered many protests since 2002 and this time it was apparent that we, the journalists, were special targets,” said journalist, Guram Rogava.

“It was clear that they were deliberately attacking media representatives. This is the policy of Georgian Dream. The government is in such a state that, for some reason, its survival instinct dictates the need to intimidate the media.”

Rogava was doing a live broadcast from a protest when a riot policeman rushed up to him and hit him in the head on Friday. He suffered fractured facial bones in the assault.

More than 300 protesters have been detained and over 100 people have been treated for injuries.

One of the protesters, 22-year-old Aleksi Tirqia was placed in an induced coma after he was allegedly hit with a tear gas capsule.

The ruling Georgian Dream retained control of parliament in the disputed 26 October election, a vote widely seen as a referendum on Georgia’s EU aspirations.

The opposition and the pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, have accused the governing party of rigging the vote with the help neighbouring Russia to keep the Moscow-friendly ruling Georgian Dream party in power.

But the protests against the election became angrier and spread beyond Tbilisi after the Georgian Dream’s decision last Thursday to put the EU accession talks on hold until at least 2028.

That was in response to a European Parliament resolution that criticised the elections as neither free nor fair.

It said the election represented another manifestation of Georgia’s continued democratic backsliding “for which the ruling Georgian Dream party is fully responsible.”

International observers say they saw instances of violence, bribery and double voting at the polls, prompting some EU lawmakers to demand a re-run.

“Each person who is standing here is fighting. Of course, we want better connections with Europe, with the United States and we don’t need Russia. This is the main reason why young people are standing here,” said one of the protesters, Tamar Akhvlediami.

The EU granted Georgia candidate status in December 2023 on condition that it meet the bloc’s recommendations, but Brussels put that process on hold earlier this year after the passage of a controversial ‘foreign influence’ law, which was widely seen as a blow to democratic freedoms.

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Critics have also accused Georgian Dream of becoming increasingly authoritarian and tilted toward Moscow. The party recently pushed through laws similar to those used by the Kremlin to crack down on freedom of speech and LGBTQ+ rights.

Georgia’s pro-EU President Salome Zourabichvili refused to recognise the election results and contested them before the Constitutional Court, which rejected her appeal earlier this week.

Zourabichvili, who plays a largely ceremonial role, has urged the country’s Western partners to respond to police brutality against protesters and raids of opposition groups by putting “strong pressure on a ruling party that is driving the country over the cliff!”