Thousands of Georgians demonstrated in front of their country’s parliament for the fifth night in a row on Monday, widening a political crisis that has set the country’s pro-Russian government against those who want closer ties with the West.
At the center of the clash is the announcement last week by the governing Georgian Dream party that the country would put talks on European Union membership on hold until 2028.
The president, Salome Zourabichvili, who favors ascension to the E.U., has encouraged the thousands who have taken to the streets nightly to protest the delay.
“We want our European destiny to be returned to us,” she told France’s Inter Radio on Monday. The protests, which began last Thursday in Tbilisi, the capital, have spread to cities across the country, in a sign of the widening anger with the government.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze doubled down on Monday, telling reporters that there would be “no negotiations” with the opposition forces protesting and boycotting the country’s parliament.
“I remind everyone that there will be no revolution in Georgia,” he said, alleging that the protests had been “funded from abroad.”
Mr. Kobakhidze had said last week that Georgia was not abandoning its long-term goal of joining the European Union, but was pausing to reconsider the terms of accession. Among other things, he mentioned calls by the E.U. to repeal recent laws that ban what is described as L.G.B.T.Q. propaganda, according to Imedi, a pro-government TV network in Georgia.
Ms. Zourabichvili is often at odds with the Georgian Dream Party, which has been in power since 2012 and is able to set the legislative agenda.
Opposition to the government’s decision is widening to also include schools. There were reports on Monday published on the social messaging site Telegram of students protesting in Tbilisi after the authorities called on parents not to allow minors to take part.
Telegram channels shared videos of students from various schools gathering in the capital, as well as the cities of Batumi, Rustavi, and Akhaltsikhe.
Law enforcement bodies have arrested dozens of protesters, including the opposition leader Zurab Japaridze, a coalition of three opposition parties, Coalition for Change, said on X. Authorities said more than 220 people had been detained during the first four nights of protest, and that 21 police had been injured.
The local branch of Transparency International, a human rights watchdog, said that many of those detained during the protests on Monday had been hurt. “Some detainees are currently being held in medical facilities, suffering from extensive bruises and facial injuries, including fractured noses and jaws,” a news release on the group’s website said.
It also said the authorities had also used “unprecedented repressive measures against the peaceful demonstrators,” made unlawful arrests, and deliberately targeted journalists. Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group, said Monday that more 25 journalists had been detained covering the protests.
What’s at stake?
Georgia has long been torn between great powers, a vexing problem for the small country on the Black Sea that was once part of the Soviet Union. Almost 80 percent of Georgians favor E.U. membership, according to a poll released last year by the National Democratic Institute, a nongovernmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that is funded by the U.S. and other Western governments.
But others worry that neighboring Russia would punish Tbilisi for closer ties to Brussels and Washington. They point to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea away from Ukraine in 2014 after Ukrainians signaled they wanted a closer alignment with Europe.
Tbilisi’s ties with Moscow were strained following a 2008 war with Russia that lasted five days but left deep scars in Georgia. Still, there are some Georgians, especially in more rural communities in the former industrial heartland, nostalgic for the Soviet past.
The current political turmoil began following elections in October. The elections commission declared that the Georgian Dream party had won 54 percent of the vote, handing the party a fourth mandate to form the government. Ms. Zourabichvili sided with a bloc of opposition parties that ended with 61 of the parliament’s 150 seats, but denounced the election process as illegitimate and vowed to boycott the legislative body.
What led to the protests?
Progressives in Georgia were already furious over a law passed this summer branding media outlets and civil society organizations that receive funding from Western organizations as being under “foreign influence.” The law, which spurred its own set of demonstrations, is similar to a 2012 Russian law on “foreign agents” that has been used to suppress anti-government views there and stigmatize those who share them.
The disputed elections in October added to the disenchantment. On Thursday, members of the European Parliament voted by a margin of 444-72 in favor of a nonbinding resolution condemning the elections, which they said “do not serve as a reliable representation of the will of the Georgian people.” The body called for the results to be invalidated and for the vote to be rerun under international supervision.
It was several hours later that Mr. Kobakhidze announced Tbilisi was suspending its negotiations with the E.U. for four years, despite an article in Georgia’s constitution that sets integration into the 27-member bloc as a national priority.
On Monday, he maintained that joining the bloc “by 2030” continued to be a “top priority” for the country. “I want to convince everyone that European integration is not postponed but will be pursued with maximum efforts,” Mr. Kobakhidze said at Monday’s news conference.
It was a claim rejected by the protesters.
Response from the West
The European Union issued a statement on Sunday lamenting Mr. Kobakhidze’s intention to pull Georgia away from the E.U.
“We note that this announcement marks a shift from the policies of all previous Georgian governments and the European aspirations of the vast majority of the Georgian people, as enshrined in the Constitution of Georgia,” the statement said.
The E.U. said the process of accession had already been “de facto” halted in June because of European concerns over the “foreign influence” law. More than $126 million in E.U. funds earmarked to support economic development and accession to the bloc were canceled in October ahead of the elections because of “democratic backsliding,” the E.U. delegation to Georgia said at the time.
Ms. Zourabichvili, the president, called for even stronger support from the European Union.
“I think the European Union needs to bang its fist on the table, because that’s what the people are waiting for, and they’d be extremely disappointed, given that today they’re demonstrating more strongly for Europe than anywhere else,” she said Monday in the France Inter radio interview.
The United States also responded, announcing on Saturday that it was downgrading ties by suspending Washington’s “strategic partnership” with Georgia.
And the leaders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia imposed travel bans on a number of high-ranking Georgian Dream members on Monday including the founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.
What has Russia said?
Moscow has sought to portray the Western response to Georgia’s election as foreign meddling. “Everything that is happening in Georgia is its internal business,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov told reporters on Monday. “We have not interfered and do not mean to interfere in these processes.”
He said that Moscow had observed “an attempt to destabilize the situation,” implying that the West was trying to foment a political crisis. He compared the events in Georgia to Ukraine’s 2004 so-called Orange Revolution and the 2013 Maidan Revolution, when mass protests led to the ousters of pro-Russian governments in Kyiv, saying he saw a “direct parallel.”
The events are being watched closely in Ukraine, where people see the protests as part of the same struggle they have waged against Russian influence. People who participated in the Maidan Revolution have offered advice on social networks about how to erect barriers against riot police and published messages of support.
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