Protests against Foreign Agents Law Continue in Tbilisi

On April 2O, women and youth marches were held against the Foreign Agents law. The women’s protest also concerned the recent abolition of the mandatory women quotas for political parties in electoral lists.

Dozens of women gathered at 17:00 at the First Republic Square, marching down the Rustaveli avenue to the Parliament building where they held the rally. “We, the women, choose Europe. No to Russian Law” a demonstrator’s sign read. “Not fragile like a lower, fragile like a bomb,” “Give us back quotas!” read other signs.

“The vast majority of Georgia’s population believe that women’s place is in politics. The population of Georgia believes that women and men should be fifty-fifty in the Parliament. But the Georgian Dream, which has decided that it wants to get more men in the Parliament, abolished the quotas in couple of days underhandedly,” Baia Pataraia, a Georgian feminist activist and the director of the women’s rights organization Sapari addressed the crowd, calling on the ruling party to bring back the quotas.

At 19:00 Tbilisi time the youth marched again in Tbilisi in protest to the Foreign Agents Law, first gathering near Parliament building and blocking Rustaveli avenue, then heading towards the Presidential palace, after which they were planning to go to the Government administration, chanting “No to Russian Law!”

“There is no greater happiness than the youth of your country, the future of the country, coming to the Presidential palace to say thank you. I also thank you for being free and dignified, strong and righteous. I am not afraid, in your hands this country will be European, democratic, and most importantly independent and very Georgian. We will go through this path together!” President Salome Zurabishvili reacted to the youth march on Facebook.

The police, their faces covered with medical masks, were mobilized at the Georgian government administration building, because at some point the information spread that the youth were going to march there too. This time, however, the government building was not one of the targets of the march.

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