After spending his days making wine in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, Tsotne Jafaridze returns home to Tbilisi, Georgia\u2019s capital, and begins his new routine. He packs goggles, a gas mask and enough water and snacks to last several hours. He has another long night ahead. <\/p>\n
Jafaridze is among thousands of Georgians who have for the past month gathered each night outside the country\u2019s parliament, facing down tear gas and water cannons fired by increasingly brutal police, to protest a bill they fear will torpedo its bid to join the European Union and push it further into the Kremlin\u2019s orbit. <\/p>\n
The ruling Georgian Dream party is trying to force through a \u201cforeign agent\u201d law, likened by critics to a measure introduced by Russian President Vladimir Putin to quash dissent. The draft law, which has passed the second of three votes, would require organizations in the former Soviet country that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as \u201cforeign agents\u201d or face crippling fines. <\/p>\n
Jafaridze, who also owns a travel business and says he receives 95% of his income <\/strong>from foreign sources, says he would \u201cimmediately\u201d be listed as a foreign agent under the broadly-written law. But critics say the intended target of the legislation is not business owners like him, but Georgia\u2019s independent media and civil society organizations, ahead of elections in October in which Georgian Dream, whose popularity is waning, is desperate to keep power. <\/p>\n Georgia\u2019s government tried to pass the same law last year, but was forced into an embarrassing climbdown after a week of intense <\/strong>protests, which saw citizens waving EU flags buffeted back by water cannons. In a move widely seen as an effort to reward Georgia\u2019s citizens \u2013 of whom about 80% support joining the bloc \u2013 and reverse the country\u2019s drift towards Russia, the EU granted it candidate status in December. <\/p>\n But the government reintroduced the same bill in March and appears determined to force it through, despite protests that grow fiercer every week. <\/p>\n \u201cAt that moment they grabbed me, dragged me in and assaulted me,\u201d he said, in an ordeal that lasted around 15 minutes. \u201cThey were telling me that I talk too much and they\u2019d make sure I would not be able to any more.\u201d Khabeishvili was seen speaking in Parliament the next day with his face wrapped in bandages. <\/p>\n Many Georgians feel deep hostility toward Russia, which invaded Georgia in 2008 and occupies about 20% of its internationally recognized territory \u2013 about the same proportion it occupies in Ukraine. Despite recent Russian aggression against Georgia, Georgian Dream has long been accused of harboring pro-Russian sympathies and its billionaire founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, made his fortune in the Soviet Union. <\/p>\n \u201cNot many people believe that a person who makes billions in Russia is just let out of Russia without any commitments,\u201d Buziashvili said. Many Georgians describe Ivanishvili as a \u201cpuppet master\u201d and believe elected officials mostly dance to his tune. <\/p>\n Ivanishvili, once a frontline politician but now a reclusive figure, made a rare appearance Monday night, addressing a crowd of counter-protesters after thousands of people were bussed to Tbilisi from Georgia\u2019s rural regions, where Georgian Dream enjoys more support. <\/p>\n His speech showed deep paranoia, conspiracism and had an autocratic streak. Ivanishvili claimed Georgia was being controlled by \u201ca pseudo-elite nurtured by a foreign country.\u201d He claimed the world was run by a \u201cGlobal War Party,\u201d which he suggested was responsible for Russia\u2019s 2008 invasion. And he pledged to persecute his political opponents after October\u2019s elections. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Georgian government is clearly siding with the Putinist, anti-liberal forces of the world,\u201d Sabanandze, the former EU ambassador, said. \u201cIt\u2019s turning into an instrument in the hands of Russia. I cannot speculate. I have no idea whether they\u2019re working on Russia\u2019s instructions, but they certainly are fulfilling their interests.\u201d <\/p>\n As protests swelled in Tbilisi, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze also appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual gathering in Hungary. In his speech, Kobakhidze denounced the \u201cso-called liberals\u201d protesting outside parliament and said they were attacking \u201chomeland, language, and faith.\u201d Sabanadze noted the appeal that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Europe\u2019s longest-serving leader, has to governments seeking to hold onto power. <\/p>\n The United States has criticized Georgia\u2019s recent shift. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the foreign agent legislation and Georgian Dream\u2019s \u201canti-Western rhetoric put Georgia on a precarious trajectory.\u201d <\/p>\n Kobakhidze has hit back at the US criticism and on Friday accused Washington of attempting to stoke a revolution in Georgia \u201ccarried out through NGOs financed from external sources.\u201d <\/p>\n Some have questioned why Georgian Dream reintroduced the foreign agent bill at this moment, almost exactly a year after it was first defeated. Ivanishvili explained in his speech that he had calculated the moment \u201cperfectly:\u201d by introducing the bill now, he hoped the energy of the protesters would be \u201cprematurely wasted\u201d and that their power would be \u201cdrained\u201d before October. <\/p>\n In an interesting parallel, Ivanishvili said he was not like Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine toppled by the Maidan protests in 2014, when thousands of Ukrainians demanded a European future \u2013 in scenes similar to those in Tbilisi today. <\/p>\n \u201cHe thinks that this situation here is different, that he\u2019s more in control, and that he will not allow the kind of Maidan to take place in Georgia,\u201d said Sabanadze. \u201cBut he might be underestimating the popular outrage.\u201d <\/p>\n As the protests show no sign of slowing, some have questioned whether they could swell into something resembling a revolution. \u201cIf this government doesn\u2019t withdraw this bill now, when they still have the chance, it will be hard for them to get to the elections. It\u2019s a spiral at the moment,\u201d said Sabanadze. <\/p>\n Jafaridze, the winemaker, says he has never seen the country so united. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to defeat these people. This is not Belarus. This is not Russia.\u201d <\/p>\n\n After spending his days making wine in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, Tsotne Jafaridze returns home to Tbilisi, Georgia\u2019s capital, and begins his new routine. He packs goggles, a gas mask and enough water and snacks to last several hours. He has another long night ahead. Jafaridze is among thousands of Georgians who have <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":18704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18703","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\/18703","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=18703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018This is not Belarus\u2019<\/h2>\n