Published on June 20, 2024 at 11:54. / Modified on June 20, 2024 at 12:02.
In Georgia, civil society is under attack. This June morning in the cafes of Tbilisi, that’s all they talk about. One activist was sent to hospital with a broken nose after being beaten while walking home hours earlier. All point the finger at the responsibility of Georgian Dream, the ruling party, seeing it as a campaign of targeted intimidation. Because since the adoption of the controversial law on “foreign influence” which obliges all NGOs or media to label themselves as “foreign agents” and to submit to increased administrative control if more than 20% of their funding comes from international sources, the threats are increasing. Many fear that the law will serve to repress the opposition a few months before the legislative elections.
Latest trend? Paint the words “Here lies a foreign agent who sells the country” in red on the walls of the headquarters of different organizations. “But there are also these numbers with Ethiopian or Egyptian codes which continually call us to insult and threaten us,” explains Teo Kavtarashvili, head of the NGO TechGOGO, an association which trains women in rural areas of the country in digital professions. For its part, closely following the threats weighing on civil society, the service of the head of diplomacy of the European Union Josep Borrell “deplored” the increasing number of acts of intimidation and physical attacks reported in Georgia against the opposition, activists and journalist, calling on the Georgian authorities “to put an end to these negative developments and to thoroughly and timely investigate the documented acts of violence and intimidation.”
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