A large protest was held in Tbilisi on Saturday to demand harsh punishment for a woman accused of defacing a religious icon depicting Josef\u00a0Stalin\u00a0which was recently-installed in the Georgian capital, as tensions over the incident remained high. <\/p>\n
The woman is alleged to have splashed paint on the icon, which was on display in the city\u2019s main Holy Trinity Cathedral, on Tuesday in an act of protest that exposed deep divisions in Georgia over the former Soviet dictator\u2019s legacy in his homeland. <\/p>\n
Thousands of Orthodox believers and supporters of the Alt-Info pro-Russian ultra-conservative movement gathered on Saturday in front of the country\u2019s parliament before matching through the city in the direction of the cathedral. <\/p>\n
The crowd \u2013 observed by the police \u2013 was addressed by a speaker complaining about the attack on the icon. A Reuters reporter estimated the crowd to be up to 3,000-strong. <\/p>\n
A Georgian nationalist party, called the Alliance of Patriots, which has also expressed pro-Russian views, said it had gifted the icon to the cathedral. <\/p>\n
A side panel of the icon includes a depiction of the Georgian-born\u00a0Stalin\u00a0\u2013 an avowed atheist who violently repressed religion across the Soviet Union \u2013 being blessed by St Matrona of Moscow, a Russian Orthodox saint, during World War Two. <\/p>\n
The police opened an investigation into \u201cpetty hooliganism\u201d and questioned the woman who had damaged the icon. <\/p>\n
But some Orthodox Church activists and believers want the woman, who has been named in Georgia media, to be subject to a criminal investigation and be potentially jailed for what they say was an act that insulted the icon and their beliefs. <\/p>\n
They also want the law which deals with such incidents to be made tougher, according to local reports. <\/p>\n
Flowers were placed by the icon on Saturday as believers lined up to kiss the part of it depicting\u00a0Stalin. <\/p>\n
Some Georgian media outlets have reported that Orthodox activists had previously tried to storm the woman\u2019s apartment in Tbilisi, but were prevented by the police. <\/p>\n\n
A large protest was held in Tbilisi on Saturday to demand harsh punishment for a woman accused of defacing a religious icon depicting Josef\u00a0Stalin\u00a0which was recently-installed in the Georgian capital, as tensions over the incident remained high. The woman is alleged to have splashed paint on the icon, which was on display in the city\u2019s <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}