A protester places a cardboard tube on his shoulder, decorated with festive designs out of place amid the chaos of demonstrations in Georgia. He aims and two fireworks burst into multicolored sparks above the police officers.
The scene is repeated hundreds of times, every evening, in the capital Tbilisi to the point of becoming emblematic of the pro-European rallies which have shaken this Caucasian country since November 28.
This improvised weaponry risks burning the police officers. But for a young, hooded 22-year-old protester, the fireworks that he and his companions use are still “the friendliest” way of making their anger heard.
“The other methods would be much more violent,” he assures AFP in a voice that struggles to cover the detonations.
Of him, we only see his eyes. He wants to be called Dato for fear of legal proceedings, nearly 300 people having already been arrested, in particular for having set off fireworks against the police, who for their part use water cannons and tear gas .
The demonstrations were provoked by the postponement of the accession process to the European Union. This choice of the Georgian Dream party government, already highly contested since the October legislative elections, is seen by many as a betrayal and proof of a desire for rapprochement with neighboring Russia.
Asked about his use of violence, Dato retorts that “what is stolen from us is much worse than what is inflicted on them, just burns.” Especially since the police do not hesitate to attack demonstrators.
While nearly 150 officers were injured in the clashes, according to the Interior Ministry, the opposition, the country’s ombudsman and Western states accuse the police of excessive use of violence. Images of brutal arrests circulated widely, galvanizing the crowd.
– “Four years I have been protesting!”-
“We tried peaceful demonstrations for years, it had zero effect,” continues Dato, very close to parliament, the epicenter of the protest.
When asked if he has been on the street since the first day of this mobilization, the young man laughs: “I’ve been demonstrating for four years!”
As veteran as he is, he had never seen fireworks used like this. A video, which has gone viral, shows a particularly inventive demonstrator, firing an impressive homemade device made up of multiple fireworks mortars which, from a distance, resembles a flamethrower.
An 18-year-old protester, Liza, laughingly shows a photo on her phone of a riot police officer, one of those nicknamed Robocops because of their heavy equipment, injured in the posterior by a firework.
“They all need to see this photo, so they know what their fate will be if they stay there,” she believes.
Those who shoot remain a minority in an otherwise peaceful crowd. Vakho, 32, says he does not use them, but nevertheless approves of the strategy: “We want to tire out the police.”
Another way to achieve this goal is the use of green lasers pointed at the agents’ faces.
“We try to blind them a little,” comments Tsotné, 28, mask on his face and laser, barely bigger than a lighter, in his hand.
– Lasers and projector –
Gotcha Lobjanidzé, 29, says he ordered his online. “The instructions said not to point it at your eyes,” he says with a mischievous smile, a few minutes after doing precisely that.
These lasers are also used to communicate. By projecting them all together on the parliament building, the demonstrators indicate, for example, in which direction to mass.
But when it comes to getting messages across, the undisputed master is David Dzidzichvili.
This 38-year-old researcher specializing in disinformation uses his projector, usually reserved for family celebrations, to display messages on the massive walls of parliament.
“You can see the crowd react when we write certain words, for example ‘noise’,” he says, rather proudly.
To demonstrate it, he types the text on his phone, connected by wifi to the object. The message appears, thousands of people scream.
One by one, demonstrators march to ask him for personalized messages, of support for detained friends or of mockery aimed at the authorities.
At the end of the evening, when the police told the demonstrators over a loudspeaker to leave, the response came from the projector: “it’s up to the government to clear out”, we read in yellow letters.
Do you have a real estate project in mind? Yakeey & Médias24 help you make it happen!
