TBILISI, May 13. /TASS/. Georgian law enforcers started dispersing participants of the rally against the draft law on foreign agents from the parliament’s building in the country’s capital of Tbilisi, a TASS correspondent reported from the scene on Monday.
The police began pushing protesters away from the service entrances of the parliament’s building. Protestors refuse to follow the instructions of the police and sporadic scuffles are reported between the protesters and the country’s law enforcers.
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.