Opinion: "Georgian Dream doesn’t realise that solidarity in Georgia doesn’t depend on just 3 or 4 foundations"
What gives Georgia’s protesters their strength
“Georgian Dream doesn’t realise that the strong sense of solidarity in this country isn’t tied to just three or four foundations — you can’t change young people; they are free citizens,” said Lasha Tughushi, head of the Liberal Academy, on TV Pirveli’s Daily News programme. He was reacting to the Georgian Dream government’s freezing of foundation accounts and the coordinated home raids on foundation leaders on 29 April.
On 28 April, the Prosecutor’s Office conducted coordinated searches of the homes of foundation leaders who had supported protesters and political prisoners. Raids were carried out at the homes of Nanuka Zhorzholiani, Mariam Badzhelidze, Guga Khelaia, and Aleko Tsikitishvili. Prosecutors entered the residences based on a court order, which cited an investigation into “sabotage” and “aiding a foreign state or organisation in hostile activity.”
Earlier, the Prosecutor’s Office froze the funds of organisations that had provided assistance to fined protesters and families of political prisoners. The accounts of the Nanuka Fund, Nika Gilauri’s fund, and the Tbilisi Human Rights House were seized.
Head of the Liberal Academy Lasha Tughushi:
“This is a process aimed at building a dictatorship in the country. That much is clear. We are seeing all the signs of what kind of political process we are dealing with.
When they build a dictatorship, of course they always look for justifications — they invent things, they fabricate coups, revolutions, actions against the state.
These days, we’re seeing all sorts of conspiracy theories emerge, including talk of a ‘deep state’ and a ‘party of global war’. It’s obvious they’re trying to find weak spots step by step, but they can’t — so they keep making mistake after mistake.
If you ask me, the real ‘sabotage’ and ‘subversive activity’ is being carried out against the democratic Georgian state — by the very force that calls itself the legitimate government of this country.”
“We are witnessing a coup unfold before our eyes, and this process has its authors. [Georgian Dream wants a coup] because they are building a new state — one that the overwhelming majority of Georgian citizens do not want. This state is a dictatorship. That’s what they’re constructing.
Right now, we are in a transitional moment. The protests taking place in the streets are directed precisely against this. The authorities are trying to destroy the protest, dismantle it, and break down the institutions and systems in Georgia that are fighting to make the country a democracy.
The fight they are waging — what we saw yesterday [during the raids] — is outright terror. But it won’t work, because you cannot change people’s spirit, you cannot change the youth. They are free citizens. They want to live in a country built by free people, not merely survive under a one-man dictatorship.
It’s a telling thing: when a dictatorship is being built, there must be only one benefactor. Widespread solidarity has no place in such a system.
The right to show solidarity must be granted by a single person. Solidarity must exist only thanks to someone. And we see exactly what they are fighting against. Dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, and hybrid systems always fear free people — especially free speech, and especially the free expression of a society’s will in the streets. That’s why they act in such irrational ways and try to justify it afterward.
It also shows that this regime forgives no one. It doesn’t care — it will make a child cry or humiliate a woman. They like to say ‘a man is a man, a woman is a woman,’ but it’s all a parody. Is it manly to barge into the bedroom of a pregnant woman during a raid?”
