Over the current years, my house metropolis of Tbilisi has seen maybe seen greater than its fair proportion of mass political protests — some peaceable, some much less so.
Lots of them have been touched not directly by the large geopolitical query that we in Georgia dwell with day by day.
What's our relationship, as a small state aspiring for democracy of simply as much as 4 million folks within the southern Caucasus, with the a lot bigger, and more and more autocratic Russian Federation that lies on our northern border?
Over three days and two nights, tens of 1000's of Georgians took to the streets once more to offer their reply to that query simply a few weeks in the past.
I used to be stunned myself by what number of of them had been younger; they waved EU flags within the face of water cannons amid clouds of tear gasoline, defying the specter of arrest by baton-wielding riot police.
They had been offended over measures launched by the ruling Georgia Dream that — for the protestors — had been a transparent signal of shifting nearer to Russia and away from constructing nearer ties with the European Union.
We have seen this intolerant playbook elsewhere — and it isn't good
The protestors had been demanding that the federal government abandon a proposed new regulation to manage worldwide funding of native NGOs — the newest stage in a authorities marketing campaign towards NGOs and towards critics within the media that began gathering tempo earlier within the yr.
For somebody like me, who has labored with impartial civil society teams in Georgia for greater than twenty years, the draft NGO regulation had apparent and sinister parallels.
It mirrored comparable restrictions launched in Russia by its President Vladimir Putin in 2012, at the beginning of a marketing campaign that has eradicated important teams similar to Memorial, the human rights motion launched within the Soviet Union in 1989.
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And we had seen the playbook earlier than in Hungary, the place Viktor Orban has demonised native human rights teams for accepting international funds whereas additionally extending authorities management over the media.
In Georgia, the same assault on important voices has gathered tempo since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine final yr, which has dramatically intensified the political tensions in a rustic that was itself invaded by Russia in 2008.
The federal government initially avoided instantly accusing Russia of aggression whereas shifting quickly to hunt EU candidate standing in early March final yr, together with Ukraine and Moldova.
However since then, the ruling get together — backed by a billionaire oligarch who made his fortune in Russia — has steadily moved to brazenly distance itself from Kyiv, all of the whereas criticising President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Coming again for water cannons and tear gasoline, again and again
This rising rigidity set the scene for the huge outpouring of public anger that erupted after ruling get together MPs permitted the primary studying of the NGO financing invoice in parliament on 7 March.
Georgian NGOs and impartial media retailers made a concerted effort to clarify their opposition to the invoice to the general public as quickly because it was handed.
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