While the Georgian street belches, Western chancelleries are “deeply concerned” by the progress of a bill on “foreign influence”, which unfortunately resembles that which served to stifle civil society in Russia.
Georgia is taking another step towards Russia, its repressive laws and its muscular methods. On Wednesday, Parliament adopted, in second reading, a very controversial law on “transparency of foreign influence”, supported by the ruling Georgian Dream party and its satellite, People Power, while the streets have been in turmoil since several weeks since the text passed its first reading on April 17. On Tuesday, the police dispersed the thousands of demonstrators who came to protest in front of Parliament, using batons, tear gas, water cannons and dozens of arrests.
“Not in line with EU values”
The head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, condemned “strongly condemns the violence committed against demonstrators in Georgia who were peacefully protesting. […] As Georgia is a candidate country for EU membership, I call on its authorities to guarantee the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. he wrote on X. On Wednesday evening, the President of Georgia, Salomé Zourabichvili, in conflict with the ruling party, supported the demonstrators, however urging them not to provoke clashes with the police. Since it has been in the pipeline, Washington has called on Tbilisi not to adopt a law “inspired by the Kremlin” Who “goes against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Georgian citizens”, and will, according to Brussels, “a negative impact on Georgia’s progress on the path to the EU [n’étant] not in line with EU standards and fundamental values.
In December, the EU granted Georgia official candidate status, but said Tbilisi would need to reform its judicial and electoral systems, increase press freedom and limit the power of oligarchs, before accession negotiations are not officially launched. “EU accession negotiations should not be opened as long as this law is part of Georgia’s legal order,” recommends the European Parliament.
The new law provides that any NGO or media receiving more than 20% of its funding from abroad will have to register as an“organization promoting the interests of a foreign power” and file a public annual financial declaration, or pay hefty fines. From its first version, a little over a year ago, the opposition nicknamed the text “Putin law”, as it is modeled on the law of “foreign agents” that the Kremlin used to clean up civil society and stifle independent media and any criticism of the regime. The Georgian version, withdrawn last year after a first reading and two days of violent demonstrations, risks having the same consequences for the small Caucasian country, warn its detractors, where many independent organizations and media survive thanks to foreign subsidies , in a difficult economic context, but will refuse to self-stigma.
More than 200 organizations have already declared that they do not intend to register “in a defamatory register”, never and in any form, and “suspend cooperation with the government until the latter abandons the bill.” As in Russia, most of the organizations and media targeted will have to cease their activities, and, ultimately, risk disappearing. “The biggest problem with this law is that it is unnecessary. It is only passed to suppress NGOs and free media and, in a way, to abolish non-governmental organizations that monitor elections, because we have elections [parlementaires] in October 2024”, Baia Pataraia, women’s rights defender and director of the NGO Sapari, explains to the BBC. The fall legislative elections are in fact considered an important test for democracy in this former Soviet republic, often shaken by political crises.
“Prohibit outside interference”
Moscow, unsurprisingly, is exultant. On April 18, Russian Duma Speaker and Security Council member Vyacheslav Volodin congratulated the Georgian Dream for moving in the right direction, stating that “any country, if it wants to become a sovereign state where the people have the right to determine their own future, must adopt a law on foreign agents, the essence of which is to prohibit external interference in internal affairs” . And to accuse Washington and Brussels of wanting to overthrow the Georgian government. This is what the head of the Georgian Dream, the pro-Russian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, seems to fear, who talks about the financing by the West of agents of influence in Georgia and the existence of a “war party” in the West who dreams of opening a “second front”.
“We are on the verge of a serious civil confrontation, explains political scientist Gia Khukhashvili, quoted by the BBC. We are at a crossroads: are we heading towards Europe or are we returning to the Russian Empire, to the Soviet Union? And the authorities clearly demonstrate that we are returning to the Soviet Union.” According to this former adviser to Ivanishvili, the law is part of a series of initiatives whose objective is to create comfortable conditions in Georgia for Russian capital, while the brutal treatment of demonstrators must prove that the authorities are maintaining control. control of the situation.
