Georgia: Thousands protest 'foreign agent' law

Thousands of people protested on Tuesday in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, against a plan to reintroduce a law allowing the government to monitor NGOs and the media more easily.

The ruling Georgian Dream party announced last week it intends to bring back the bill. It had been abandoned last year following widespread protests.

The law would require groups receiving more than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as an "organization pursuing the interests of a foreign power."

The previous version of the law that was dropped in 2023 used the wording "agent of foreign influence."

Georgian Dream said that aside from the amendment in the wording "all other sections of the draft law remain unchanged" compared to 2023.

Protesters denounce 'Russian law' amid geopolitical tensions

Neighboring Russia enacted a similar law in 2012 and then tightened the legislation in 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine.

Critics of the government in Tbilisi see the Georgian bill as a tool of intimidation, with protesters calling it "the Russian law."

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 in support of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, making it broadly unpopular in the southern Caucasus country.

Also on Tuesday, Europe's top rights court ruled Moscow violated a human rights charter by helping the two self-declared independent republics set up borders blocking movement into Tbilisi-controlled areas.

The law has also been criticized by the United States and the European Union.

In November last year, the EU issued an official recommendation to grant candidate status to Georgia, which was confirmed one month later. 

sdi/jsi (AFP, Reuters)