Women’s March, dedicated to International Women’s Day, has inscribed itself in the continuous protest movement that has gripped Georgia since November. This manifesto, written by Tinatin Nogaideli, was read out on 8 March 2025. We are providing the unofficial verbatim translation, hoping it remains a testimony of these days and an inspiration.
101 years ago, the August rebellion [1924 rebellion against Soviet occupation] was subdued by the Russian boot of a Georgian dictator [Joseph Stalin] through repression of the Georgia women – members of the parliament. 101 years later, the Russian boot of the Georgian oligarch [Bidzina Ivanishvili] is also having us in his crosshairs as he tries to trample our freedom. After 101 days of non-stop protest, we, the Amazons, still stand here as the driving force of today’s rally. Standing, as no dictatorship in history has ever forgiven us for having something that stood as a shield against their advantage, their triumph over laws, their power, and their violence — our insubordination.
Throughout these 101 years, we have been slashing through your darkness, closed doors, shut windows, and bars on those windows. After 101 years, after these hundred-and-one days of our rage, we are still fighting for the light and for our voice, again. And yet as never before.
And though your laws, just like the laws of the Russian Duma, impose silence on women, we won’t be silenced. We are not silent. We won’t give you the comfort of silent, subdued, subservient women.
And what can silence us?! It is you who dare not speak.
Your silence, steeped in blood, is killing us. It is killing us for being women, for being mothers; it is killing our mothers, trans women, and girls! You are writing, adopting the laws to silence us, but these laws won’t reign upon us. We, the women, are fighting. We are fighting to prevent violence and our pre-announced death. When you are canceling [women] quotas, when you fight the words, when you are combating gender, when you are fighting equality, when you are ignoring the Constitution, you are fighting with us!
And we will fight back with ever higher determination so that the cub of the lion remains equal no matter male or female [a reference to the medieval verse from The Knight in the Panther’s Skin by Shota Rustaveli].
We refuse! We do NOT want your flowers, your 8 March sales, your feasting, and your emptying of the horns filled with wine in honor of women and yet dripping with the blood of hundreds of women! Today, we are still fighting for the ideals of The Knight in the Panther Skin, which was written in 1180. Fighting for us, for every woman, for people brought up as women, for trans women. You may caress Russia and sleep; we want to wake up from these twelve years of nightmare, and we must raise our voices everywhere.
We won’t be silent! How can we be silent?! You dare not speak up, as your violent policemen are beating their own wives, the women that stand next to us on the rallies. How can we be silent? When the bandits in uniforms are breaking our teeth, and our noses, and our bones.
We won’t be silent! How can we be silent? How can we let you take our children to prisons where Dgebuadzes [Adjara police chief, who insulted and then arrested journalist Mzia Amaglobeli for slapping him] and Kharebas [notorious head of violent riot police] are punching our country’s history, its future, language, motherland in the face?! How can we remain silent while you put a woman [Mzia Amaglobeli] behind bars for something no member of your regime has – for bravery? For seeking equality and justice?
No, we won’t hang our heads in submission! We slap the patriarchy, slap the self-appointed police, slap the authoritarianism!
We refuse to be honored after our death or after 101 years when we are safely and forever silent. We won’t wait for that. We are demanding answers, responsibility, and equality, and the day when the killing and torturing of women ends. You are proud of [martyred queen] Ketevan, Shushanik the Martyr, Marita the martyr? You won’t get Mzia the martyr!
We built this country from Greece, Germany, and America yesterday [reference to women representing the majority of emigre breadwinners], and we are building it today, and we will be building it tomorrow. We are leaving our homes for our children, for the elderly, for the pregnant, while you are leaving them without healthcare, without minimum subsistence, sacrificing them to hunger and solitude. We care while you leave the elderly buried in the snow. You don’t know what labor goes into sending the money home instead of you, without you. But not only for ours but also for your children, we demand this – new elections, equality, and justice in the courts!
The 101 days when the mothers are fighting at work during the day and in the streets during the night will transform into poison for you.
We are leaving our work, our children, and your supper at home so that you could take away the electricity from vulnerable children, and then if their house burns down from a flame, you could blame us?! What for?!
We are bringing our children up in pain, and you are sending them to prisons instead of schools. What for?!
We lose our jobs because we fight for the truth, still we go out to the streets and we shout our lungs out, while you are selling this country, its forests, its natural reserves, and your own conscience. What for?!
So that a rich man could dig a trench in the park?! And to offer what to innocent children who need to play and learn? To offer them death?! What for? [refers to recent incidents where children died in Batumi and Tbilisi due to unprotected land works at the construction sites]
We, the women, won’t let you have calm in Batumi, Kutaisi, or Tbilisi. You can’t run from women; you can’t run from your shame!
This battle has a woman’s face, and its element is fire. You’d get kerosene, fire, fireworks, a slap in the face, and our rage! We won’t stay silent, because how can we stay silent?!
And while YOU are silent about women being killed, abused, and enslaved – We, the women, won’t let you have peace!