Tbilisi riot police used tear gas and water cannons late Tuesday to disperse demonstrators who had surrounded the Georgian parliament in protest of bills that would limit the activities of foreign-funded organizations.
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Despite the fact that some protesters had dispersed, live feeds from local TV networks showed thousands of people still gathered outside the parliament’s entrance on Rustaveli Avenue, defying police orders to leave or face “legal measures.”
Protesters were eventually pushed away from the parliament building by police. According to local media, the crowds had mostly dispersed by 3 a.m. local time.
Earlier in the day, Georgian lawmakers voted 76-13 in favor of a bill requiring all organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from outside sources to register as foreign agents. The other proposal under consideration was modeled after the 1930s American FARA, which applied to individuals and included criminal penalties.
Opposition parties slammed the bill for being “Russian” in style. They had the support of the US embassy in Tbilisi, which described the bill’s passage as a “dark day for democracy” in Georgia, saying it would “undermine the important work of many Georgian organizations helping fellow citizens.”
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has also called the proposed bill “contrary to EU values” and urged Georgia to support “democracy, rule of law, and human rights.”
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, who is currently in the United States, backed the protests and said she would veto the bill if it passed in the final reading.
“This law was not needed by anyone, and it comes from nowhere, unless it is at the behest of Moscow,” she said in a video address from New York. “I’m not interested in its article-by-article discussion or its resemblance to old American law, which we all know serves a completely different purpose.”
According to the Georgian constitution, the government’s primary obligation is “to bring this country to the European Union, to protect the path of European integration,” and the law at issue is “taking us all away from Europe.”
Zurabishvili, who was born in France, was the French ambassador in Tbilisi in 2004, when the US-backed “Rose Revolution” brought Mikhail Saakashvili to power. She quickly obtained Georgian citizenship and was appointed as the country’s foreign minister.
