The Public Defender of Georgia announces that the protest on Rustaveli is a peaceful one and there is no ground to intervene in constitutional rights of the participants. He also underlines that intervention in the freedom of gathering is allowed only if a protest takes a violent and/or law opposing nature, in case of which stopping the protest should only be used as a last mean and should pass a strict test of necessity and proportionality.
“The apparatus is observing the development of the protest, which is peaceful and the participants are protesting in a peaceful manner. Gathering and holding a manifestation is a fundamental right defined by the constitution, which is one of the most important grounds of existence and development of a free and democratic society. […]
Currently, as the Ombudsman has observed, there is no law opposing character, so there is no ground for intervention in consitutional rights of the participants” – writes the apparatus of Ombudsman.
The Public Defender is calling the Ministry of Internal Affairs not to oppose the participants in executing their constitutional right.
At the parliament, where tens of thousands ot citizens are protesting the Russian Law as the commitee hearing is going on, a special forces group and a car with a water cannon appeared couple minutes ago. Participants of the protest are being arrested.
After around a year and a month of rejecting it, Georgian Dream is bringing back the Russian Law, without any preliminary warning. Mamuka Mdinaradze announced this on April 3rd, and uploaded the draft law which was rejected a year ago on the website of the parliament.
The content of the law is going to be the same, except they will not be using the word “agent”. With this, Georgian Dream is also indicating that what we were calling a Russian law a year ago, we should not call the same this year.
On April 3, Georgian Dream initiated the homophobic draft law, which is against the human rights, and, among other things, contains statements which aim to control gathering and expression, and aims for censorship.