Georgian Dream again plans to adopt the Russian law, which will restrict free and critical opinions in Georgia. The adoption of the bill will block the path of the people of Georgia to the European Union.

The Democracy Research Institute echoes the dispersal of a peaceful assembly of a large number of citizens by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on April 30, 2024, and states that the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not have the appropriate legal grounds to disperse the assembly. The use of disproportionate physical force and special equipment to disperse the rally, as well as the illegal practice of arresting participants in the rally, prove that the Ministry of Internal Affairs went beyond the scope of legality.

Publicly disseminated footage prove that the protest had not become violent at any stage. Accordingly, based on the emphatically peaceful purpose of the assembly and the peaceful behavior of the majority of the participants in the assembly, there was no legal grounds for dispersing the rally.

In addition, according to the publicly released footage, the law enforcement officers repeatedly used pepper spray at close range and without any warning, as a result of which many people were injured. According to the guidelines for the behavior of internal affairs officers during assemblies and demonstrations, before the start of a special measure, the responsible person is obliged to warn the participants in the assembly/demonstration about the use of physical force and special equipment, and to give them a reasonable time (at least 30 minutes) to comply with the legal request. At the initial stage of dispersing the rally, the said requirement was completely ignored by the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, while later, the time passed from the warning to the use of police measures did not meet the requirements of reasonableness.

In addition to the use of police measures without a legal basis to break up the rally, the law enforcement officers used physical violence against the protesters. The tactics used to arrest the participants in the rally, during which a group consisting of 7-8 masked employees of the Special Tasks Department targeted the demonstrators standing separately, sieged them, dragged them to the cordon of law enforcement officers or restricted their ability to leave the area, did not constitute a legal police measure.

The Democracy Research Institute believes that the nature of the physical injuries inflicted on the opposition Members of Parliament also shows that the injuries (mainly on the face, broken teeth) cannot be the result of legal police measures and represent clear retaliation against political opponents.

The illegal use of special equipment by the law enforcement officers and the physical attack on the participants in the rally were accompanied by the detention of the participants in the assembly, including minors. At the moment, according to the data available to civil society organizations, about 60 people were detained on the basis of the Administrative Offences Code of Georgia.

The Democracy Research Institute calls on:

• To quickly and objectively investigate the obvious cases of the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers in order to prevent further illegal actions of the law enforcement during the dispersal of protests;
• To check the legality of the order on the use of special equipment on April 30, 2024;
• Due to the high public interest, to immediately provide the public with information about the progress of the investigation.