About 50,000 protest in Tbilisi against Georgia ‘foreign agents’ bill
An estimated 50,000 people marched peacefully in heavy rain in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Saturday night after the US said parliamentarians had to choose between Kremlin-style laws or the Euro-Atlantic democratic path they had embarked upon.
The march was the latest in a series of public protests against a “foreign agents” bill that would require media and commercial organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from outside the country to register as “agents of foreign influence”.
Critics fear it will stifle the press and NGOs. The bill, which passed its second reading in parliament this month, has been labelled a Russian law by critics, who liken it to legislation introduced by the Kremlin after its invasion of Ukraine that was designed to silence political dissent in the media and elsewhere.
“We are deeply alarmed about democratic backsliding in Georgia,” the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, wrote on X.
“Georgian parliamentarians face a critical choice – whether to support the
Georgian people’s EuroAtlantic aspirations, or pass a Kremlin-style foreign agents law that runs counter to democratic values. We stand with the Georgian people.”
Georgia, with a population of 3.7
million, 1.1 million of whom live in the capital, is one of nine countries actively trying to gain accession to the EU. The former Soviet state was granted official candidate status last December.
The crowd on Saturday waved Georgian, EU and some Ukrainian flags, and in a break with the past included more older protesters as well as the many young people who have thronged the streets over the past month.
“The government should hear the free people of Georgia,” said one protester in her 30s who gave her name as Nino a was waving a large Georgian flag at the head of one of three columns converging on the city centre. The crowds blocked roads and filled the cobblestoned heart of Tbilisi’s old town. “We want to enter the European Union with our proud nation and our dignity.”
Earlier this month, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, urged Georgia to stick to the path of democracy after riot police dispersed protests about the bill with rubber bullets, teargas, stun grenades and water cannon.
“I am following the situation in Georgia with great concern and condemn the violence on the streets of Tbilisi.
The Georgian people want a European future for their country. Georgia is at a crossroads. It should stay the course on the road to Europe,” von der Leyen wrote on X.
Footage posted on social media by the journalist Ïne Back Ïversen showed the capital flooded with people in what she said was possibly the biggest yet of the daily protests that began three weeks ago.
Like most EU membership candidates, Georgia faces a hard path to accession potentially lasting a decade or longer. But its aspirations will suffer a serious setback if the the new law is adopted, as a free and independent press is one of the many prerequisites for accession talks to begin.
The ruling Georgian Dream party said the legislation was necessary to “protect society from pseudo-liberal ideology and its inevitable harmful consequences”. The government will begin committee hearings on the bill’s third and final reading on Monday.
The crisis has pitted Georgian Dream against a coalition of opposition parties, civil society, celebrities and the country’s figurehead president, and mass protests have shut down much of central Tbilisi almost nightly for more than a month.