Thousands of people demonstrated in the evening this Tuesday March 16 in Tbilisi, Georgia, after a first vote in Parliament in favor of a controversial bill on “foreign agents”, already causing demonstrations of magnitude in 2023.
3 mins
MPs adopted a first version of the bill by 78 votes to 25, allowing the legislative process to continue. Opponents of the text, at the origin of the gathering, consider it repressive and comparable to Russian legislation used by the Kremlin for years to persecute dissident voices.
A first version of this text was abandoned in March 2023 after massive protest demonstrations which were dispersed by the police with tear gas and water cannons. This time, this proposal aroused condemnation among Westerners, some seeing it as a threat to a rapprochement with the European Union, which the Georgia aims to join. The president of the country, Salomé Zourabichviliwhich is in conflict with the ruling party, condemned the decision, calling it “ contrary to the will of the population “. “ This is a direct provocation, a Russian strategy of destabilization “, she said.
Gathered in front of the Parliament in central Tbilisi, thousands of demonstrators chanted slogans like “No to Russian law!” » The crowd blocked one of the main thoroughfares of the Georgian capital, while riot police secured the entrances to the building. The demonstrators tried to push the police, who responded by using pepper spray and making several arrests. In a statement, the Georgian Interior Ministry said a police officer had been injured and called on protesters to “ stop their illegal actions “.
Brawl in Parliament
Monday evening, around 10,000 people had already demonstrated against this bill and the police had arrested fourteen of them. The deputies of the government and the opposition in Georgia came to blows on Monday during an exchange on the text, provoking a general fight in the hemicycle.
If the text is finally voted on, organizations which receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad will be obliged to register as ” organizations pursuing the interests of a foreign power », under penalty of fines. The government assures that this law will bring more “ transparency » in the financing of organizations, but its critics fear that it will be used as a tool of repression against NGOs and independent media.
The European Union has called for the text to be abandoned, believing that it goes against the reform program that this Caucasian country must undertake to progress on the path to membership. The current bill will push Georgia away from the EU instead of bringing it closer », Said Tuesday on X the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Read alsoGeorgia: controversial bill on “foreign agents” creates turmoil