No tents, no stages, no signs: Georgian Dream’s war on protest

The Caucasus Digest

Georgia’s Parliament adopted on Thursday evening amendments to the law on protests that would ban the erection of temporary structures – tents and stages included. Critics of the amendments have argued that the new regulations would stifle freedom of assembly in the country and have already begun dubbing it the ‘new Russian law’ in reference to the foreign agents law, which triggered a wave of massive protests that forced the ruling Georgian Dream party to drop it.

This week, we spoke to OC Media journalist and co-director Mariam Nikuradze about the conviction of peaceful protesters holding signs deemed offensive by the police, including a blank sheet of paper, and how the Georgian police deal with protests in the country. Dachi Imedadze, the head of strategy at the liberal activist Shame movement, talks about how these amendments could affect future demonstrations in Georgia. Guram Imnadze, a lawyer and programme director at the Social Justice Centre, a local human rights group, sheds light on the amendments and how they came to be.

Read more:

• Georgian Dream pass new anti-protest amendments
• Georgia’s ruling party accuse USAID of preparing activists for revolution
• Tbilisi court convicts protester ‘for holding blank sheet of paper’
• Lazare Grigoriadis jailed on two-year-old charges, as pretrial detention term approaches end

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