The Democracy Research Center echoes the dispersal of peaceful demonstrators by the police forces on Chavchavadze Avenue, in front of Tbilisi State University, on November 19, 2024, at dawn, and believes that the Ministry of Internal Affairs used completely disproportionate force to break up the peaceful assembly. The released footage clearly shows that the number of representatives of the police force was several times higher than the number of participants in the peaceful and non-violent assembly, and in no case was there a need to use physical force.

Although the police have the right to use force to break up a demonstration in cases defined by law, this applies only to those types of demonstrations that are violent. Several circumstances make the action of the police, carried out on November 19, in the early morning, in front of the first building of the university and on Chavchavadze Avenue, illegal: 1. The peaceful nature of the assembly and the emphatically peaceful behavior of its participants; 2. Disproportionally high number of police forces and harshness of the physical force used; 3. Absence of any type of warning from the state or local authorities regarding the assembly that had been going on for two days.

According to the reports, the Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested 14 peaceful participants in the rally. It is also alarming that the lawyers of the detainees are not given the opportunity to visit the detained persons. A journalist and a cameraman of the Main Channel TV were physically assaulted at the rally. The  video footage clearly shows several dozens of patrol police officers preventing the cameraman from performing his professional duties and physically assaulting him.

The Democracy Research Center calls on the Ministry of Internal Affairs: to return to the framework of the law; not to prevent the participants in the rally from peacefully expressing their protest; to give the media and lawyers the opportunity to perform their professional duties. It is also important to hold the person, who issued the illegal order to break up the rally, responsible in the future.