For the third month thousands across Georgia continue to demonstrate for a new presidential election and the release of people jailed by the pro-Moscow and increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream government.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime invaded Georgia in 2008 to try to reassert Moscow’s domination of a nation that had been oppressed under the rule of the former Russian czars. Moscow’s forces then withdrew from most of the country, but still occupy South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The Georgian Dream party was reelected in a disputed election in October. Then it suspended further steps toward joining the European Union Nov. 28, leading to daily protests in Tbilisi, the country’s capital, and other cities, including Batumi, Akhmeta, Telavi, and Zugdidi.
A three-hour strike Jan. 15 shut down hundreds of businesses — banks, retail stores and universities — across the country. Banners appeared throughout Tbilisi urging support for the action as workers and students filled the streets. Agricultural workers in the vineyards downed their tools.
The action followed a three-hour strike the previous day by 43 media outlets, in support of freedom of the press. The strikers demanded freedom for Mzia Amaglobeli, editor in chief of Batumelebi, a news network in Batumi, and its online magazine, Netgazeti.
Amaglobeli was arrested Jan. 11 at a protest. The next day she was charged with assaulting a police officer, an act punishable by up to seven years in prison. Since her arrest she has refused food. Media representatives and other supporters are demanding medical care and her immediate release.
Across Georgia, theaters are either silent or supporting the anti-government protests. “Since the protests started, we have not done any shows,” Niniko Lekishvili, a stand-up comedian, told the press. “Our stage was stolen from us, and we are in this fight together.”
In its first broad show of force since the brutal attacks on hundreds of demonstrators in December, Georgia’s police attacked a peaceful demonstration on the outskirts of Tbilisi Feb. 2. After thousands of protesters briefly blocked a road, the police pulled motorists out of their cars and beat them.
At least 25 people were arrested, including Nika Melia, leader of the largest opposition group in Georgia, the Coalition for Change, and former Tbilisi Mayor Giorgi Ugulava. After his release, Melia told the press that he had been physically attacked by cops in the police station. Both Melia and Ugulava have spent years in prison under Georgian Dream rule.
Raids, beatings
Police raided the homes of three protest organizers Feb. 1, beating two of them. “Family members were also roughed up,” Ruso, a protester in Tbilisi, told the Militant. “Cops showed up three hours before the demonstration Feb. 2 and began yelling anti-gay slurs at protesters as they arrived. They trapped demonstrators in the area next to the road.”
Most of the 3.7 million people in Georgia, a former Soviet republic, oppose the growing influence of the Putin regime in the country. But the government shows no sign of conceding to the demand for new elections. President Mikheil Kavelashvili told parliament Feb. 4 that threats to the country’s stability will continue until “the war in Ukraine ends and groups promoting the interests of foreign countries” — code words for anti-government protesters — “are further weakened.”
Moscow is building a new naval base in Ochamchire, Abkhazia, one of the areas it occupies. Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian government has lost or sustained damage to roughly a third of its fleet in the Black Sea and has abandoned its base on the occupied Crimean Peninsula. Ochamchire, about 435 miles from Ukraine, could provide Moscow with a base that remains largely beyond the range of Ukraine’s existing long-range strikes.