Georgia’s opposition leader was dragged from his party office by police and physically assaulted by others, with the prime minister vowing to face justice for what he called “violent actions” by organizers of a week of pro-EU protests.
Nika Gvaramia, 48, of one of the four opposition groups, was carried by his hands and feet by police from his party’s headquarters on a street next to parliament in the capital, Tbilisi.
The ambush came after other leaders met at a hotel and decided to press for a general strike.
Nightly demonstrations have been held since last Thursday after the ruling party, Georgian Dream, said it was halting the country’s bid to begin talks to join the EU.
More than 330 protesters have been arrested and rights groups say many have been beaten in custody, although authorities began going after opposition leaders after a stern briefing by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.
“Politicians who orchestrated the violence but are hiding in offices will not be able to escape responsibility for the events that have unfolded in the past days,” he warned, accusing the protesters of spreading “liberal fascism”.
Protests initially erupted in October after a contested election, which watchdog groups said had been hit by a string of violations.
But he burst into life last Thursday when Kobakhidze’s increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream party said it was suspending the country’s bid to begin negotiations to join the EU. Two days later, the US suspended Georgia’s long-standing strategic partnership.
Georgian Dream has enacted increasingly authoritarian laws targeting civil society and LGBT groups as well as freedom of speech, and opposition parties accuse the party of pushing Georgia back into the sphere of influence of neighboring Russia.
VANO SHLAMOV/AFPGeorgia’s interior ministry said more than 100 officers were injured by firecrackers, rocks and other projectiles, while the country’s human rights ombudsman accused police of brutality and torture against protesters.
Early on Monday, Nika Gwaramia, one of the leaders of the Coalition for Change, told the BBC that the protesters had no choice but to take to the streets, because the alternative was to get rid of their country, “not just in Russia’s sphere of influence but some kind of puppet territory”.
He predicted that his party HQ would soon be raided by the Georgian authorities, and it happened 36 hours later.
Other opposition leaders met for an hour at a hotel in Tbilisi’s central Liberty Square and decided to call for greater cooperation among the wider public and a general strike.
“This is a complete campaign of terror against freedom of speech, against freedom of opinion, against democracy,” Levan Tsutskiridge of Strong Georgia told the BBC.
As they left the meeting, some of the leaders were attacked in Liberty Square and two, including opposition figure and world champion wrestler Jurabi Datunashvili, were arrested by waiting police.
In the afternoon, offices of other parties in Nika Gwaramia’s Coalition for Change alliance were raided and members arrested. The alliance came second in the disputed October 26 election.
Members of two other opposition parties, Strong Georgia and the United National Movement, said several of their members were also taken away.
Authorities raided the home of an activist from Dytov, a large anti-government Facebook group that helps detained protesters, and later moved to the home of its co-founder, Nancy Woland. They also targeted activists of other movements.
Gwaramia, 46, was initially taken to a detention center on the outskirts of Tbilisi, where many of the 300 protesters arrested were being held, and then to another detention center in Marnouli, south of the capital, reports said.
Gwaramia, the former head of an opposition TV channel, spent 13 months in prison for abuse of power, but was pardoned in June 2023 by pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili.
Amnesty International said at the time that the charges against him were baseless and politically motivated.
