The Daily Beat: 10 July
On Saturday afternoon, a mob of a few thousand far-right, anti-LGBT+ protesters stormed a private Pride event at a remote Lisi lake in Tbilisi. The demonstrators scuffled with police who failed on their promise to ensure security, set fires, and destroyed rainbow flags. Many of them waved Georgian flags and carried religious icons. The pride festival was canceled as participants were evacuated to safety.
President Salome Zurabishvili, in her statement, condemned the violent attack on the Pride Fest event, saying that freedoms of expression and assembly guaranteed by the constitution were violated. According to the President, this violent attack was incited and openly supported via social media posts by various branches of the ruling Georgian Dream party and even by acting MPs from the ruling party. President also publicly accused the ruling party of failing to condemn their followers openly propagating hate speech and incitation to violence.
Organizers of Tbilisi Pride issued a statement, saying that the Interior Ministry and violent extremist group Alt-Info jointly orchestrated an attack against rights and democracy. The organizers believe that the police reneged on its commitment to ensuring the festival’s security, further claiming that the police and violent mob proceeded to the festival area in an unhindered and agreed manner. The statement’s authors decried the Interior Ministry’s forced evacuation, saying that “in fact, this was a pre-arranged step [between the police and extremists],” which explains police inaction.
Violent events leading to the cancellation of the final “Pride Festival” event also triggered reactions from the public defender, politicians, and diplomats, offering their assessment of the events at Lisi Lake.Civil.ge made a compilation of some of these reactions.
Ahead of the NATO Vilnius Summit, the Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili twitted a lengthy open letter on Georgia’s NATO membership prospects, calling it “unfortunate that some Eastern European governments that were most ardent supporters of Georgia’s NATO and EU membership have now turned into skeptics, simply because their political partners in Georgia are in opposition, not in government.” In his open letter, Papuashvili stated that there are no solid arguments for refusing Georgia’s NATO bid.
The government plans to expand the state funding program for children diagnosed with cancer, allowing them to receive medical treatment in the leading hospitals of Turkey, Israel, and Spain, in addition to Georgia. Under the new initiative, children diagnosed with cancer will have the opportunity to receive high-quality, high-tech medical services, including proton therapy for the treatment of certain types of solid tumors. The government intends to allocate GEL 30 million budget annually for this project.
Local watchdog, Social Justice Center, published a report indicating that almost a third of all Georgian minors receive subsistence allowance. According to the Social Justice Center’s report, as of May 2023, 254,333 children, or 28.3% of all minors, were receiving subsistence allowance in Georgia, meaning approximately one in three children gets this support. Social Justice Center reported that 38% of the children are registered in the socially vulnerable population base, also noting some positive policy changes by the government in offering broader social assistance.
