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A summary of today's developments
Riot police confronted protesters in Georgia on Tuesday after its parliament passed a divisive “foreign agent” law. Protests outside Georgia’s parliament intensified over the bill, condemned as a Kremlin-inspired act of repression. A number of demonstrators were treated by medics after teargas was used by police on a crowd of a few thousand people, while squads of police dragged some individuals away. Thirteen protesters were detained near parliament, The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
The violence spread into the chamber, with a dozen MPs fighting and one MP, from the governing Georgian Dream party, being held back by security guards as he violently lurched at the chair of the main opposition, Levan Khabeishvili. Under the legislation, media or civil society groups in Georgia that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad will have to register as “organisations serving the interests of a foreign power”.
Georgia has been warned by the US government not to become an adversary of the west by falling back in line with Moscow, as its parliament defied mass street protests to pass a “Kremlin-inspired” law. The US assistant secretary of state Jim O’Brien spoke of his fears that the passing by Georgia’s parliament of a “foreign agents” bill on Tuesday could be yet another “turning point” in the former Soviet state’s troubled history. In comments that appeared to signal a conviction in Washington that the Georgian government was once again aligning with Russia, O’Brien suggested US funding could soon be pulled.
Georgia’s prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze responded to the statement made by James O’Brien. Kobakhidze said: “Pragmatically speaking, sanctions would only harm those who are imposing them. “We do not want the US reputation to get spoiled and we call on our partners to think about partnerships.”
The UK’s minister for Europe, Nusrat Ghani, said the scenes in Georgia are “shocking” and “as friends of Georgia we call for calm and restraint on all sides.”
