TBILISI, May 8. /TASS/. Georgia’s police used proportional force during the recent protests outside the country's parliament in response to demonstrators’ actions, the director of the Central Criminal Police Department at Georgia’s Interior Ministry, Teimuraz Kupatadze, has told a news briefing.
He stressed that the recent demonstrations in Tbilisi "more than once went beyond the bounds permissible under the law on assemblies and demonstrations."
"We have seen an attempt to storm the legislative body, an attempt to picket the parliament, as well as more than one case of violence against police. This footage hit the spotlight not only in Georgian but also in the world media. My European colleagues will agree that this force was proportional and the actions of Georgian police were rather lenient," Kupatadze said.
The Interior Ministry official also warned the participants and organizers of the rallies that the police would use tough measures to stop protesters’ violent actions, the way it is done in the US and leading European countries. During Kupatadze's speech, a monitor screen installed next to him was showing footage of violent treatment of protesters by police in various countries around the world.
Since April 15, opposition and civil activists have been holding rallies in Tbilisi against the adoption of the law on foreign agents. Several times demonstrations turned into clashes with police. Riot control forces used pepper gas and water cannon to disperse protesters near the parliament building. During one of the rallies, when the protesters tried to force open the parliament’s gate, according to journalists' testimonies, riot police fired rubber bullets. The Interior Ministry denied this.
On May 1, the Georgian parliament after the second reading supported the bill On the Transparency of Foreign Influence, which President Salome Zourabichvili, the opposition and Western diplomats oppose as an obstacle to the country’s integration into the European Union.
The US Department of State said that the purpose of the bill was to undermine the country's active civil society. The leaders of the Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party argue that the law only serves the purpose of transparency of foreign funding of the non-governmental sector and media.
The ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party announced in early April that it had decided to reintroduce the bill to parliament. This happened a year after a similar initiative triggered mass protests, forcing the authorities to abandon the bill. Its text remains identical to last year’s, except for the term "agent of foreign influence." Instead, the term "organization promoting the interests of a foreign power" is used.