TBILISI, May 13. /TASS/. The Georgian Interior Ministry has arrested 20 people, including one Russian and two US citizens, at a rally in Tbilisi against the foreign agents law, the security service said in a statement.
"Police officers arrested 20 people under Articles 166 ("Petty Hooliganism") and 173 ("Disobeying the Police") of the Georgian Administrative Offences Code. Three of the arrested are citizens of foreign countries, those being a Russian citizen born in 2002, a US citizen born in 1995 and a citizen of the same country who refused to reveal his identity," the ministry said in a statement.
The security service added that it had already informed the Swiss embassy in Tbilisi about the detention of the Russian national, as well as the US embassy about the detention of the Americans.
Opponents of the foreign agents law held another rally on Sunday. They gathered in front of the parliament and stayed there overnight to prevent deputies from starting the third reading of the initiative at the meeting of the Legal Affairs Committee on the morning of May 13. By Monday morning, police had removed the protesters from the parliament entrances. The committee wound up passing the bill in the third reading.
On May 1, Georgia’s parliament passed the second reading of the bill "On the Transparency of Foreign Influence," which had been opposed by President Salome Zourabichvili, the opposition and Western diplomats, who see it as an obstacle to Georgia’s integration into the European Union. The US State Department said that the bill was aimed at undermining activism in the country. Leaders of the ruling Georgian Dream party say that it is simply intended to ensure transparency of foreign funding for the nongovernmental sector and media. Zourabichvili has said that she will veto the bill if it is passed in all three readings.
Since April 15, the opposition and activists have been holding rallies in Tbilisi against the adoption of the foreign agents law. On several occasions, the protests turned into clashes with law enforcement officers, and riot police used pepper gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators near the Georgian parliament.