On Thursday, thousands of protesters gathered outside Georgia’s parliament, demanding the release of all those arrested during two days of rioting over a proposed “foreign agents” law. The government has already withdrawn the proposal and released everyone who has not been charged with a crime.
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According to local media outlets, opposition politicians are calling for the government’s resignation and threatening to turn the protests “harsh and uncompromising” unless all detainees are released. The Georgian interior ministry reported 133 arrests during the riots on Thursday morning.
Aside from “several” who were granted a court hearing, the rest were “released after the legal limit for their preliminary detention lapsed,” according to the police. Georgian law limits uncharged detention to 48 hours. The police are still looking into several cases of officers being assaulted during the “violent events” outside the parliament.
Protesters waving US, EU, Ukrainian, and Georgian flags besieged the parliament and attempted several times to break in, clashing with police and pelting them with rocks, bottles, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails. The police retaliated with tear gas, flash bangs, and water cannons.
Protests were called by opposition parties after the parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring any organization that receives 20% or more of its funding from abroad to register as a foreign agent. The bill has been branded “Russian” by critics, and its passage would be a “dark day for democracy,” according to the US embassy.
President Salome Zurabishvili, who is currently in the United States, backed the protests, saying the bill would jeopardize Georgia’s “Euro-Atlantic integrations.” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky agreed, thanking demonstrators for flying Ukrainian flags. The EU has threatened to withdraw its support for Georgia due to its alleged “intimidation of essential democratic entities.”
The ruling coalition announced Thursday morning that it was withdrawing the bill because “the machine of lies was able to present the bill in a negative light and mislead a certain part of the public.” The ruling Georgian Dream party said it intended to “better explain to the public what the bill was for and why it was important to ensure the transparency of foreign influence in our country,” once the populace calms down.
