The calls started on May 6 – unknown numbers appearing on the phones of Georgian journalists, opposition politicians, and activists.
Tinatin Bolokadze, an officer in the Georgian opposition party Girchi – More Freedom, was at home on May 8 when she received her first of 15 such calls. Members of the party, which espouses government de-regulation and free-market economic policies, have been closely involved in organizing ongoing protests against a controversial “foreign agents” draft law, and the person on the line wanted the demonstrations to stop. “If you continue doing this,” she recalled the male caller saying, “you will get bad consequences.”
Others in the party received similar messages, including two death threats. They largely brushed them off. But on May 9, the threat of violence became real when unknown assailants attacked party member Boris Kurua near his home, leaving him with a broken finger and head injuries. He remained hospitalized as of midday May 10.
Over the past week, Georgian opposition figures and journalists have experienced a wave of harassment, intimidation, and – in some cases – physical violence. All signs seem to point toward a coordinated attempt to silence anti-government voices and participation in mass rallies against the controversial “foreign agents” bill ahead of its expected signing into law in the coming weeks.
Eurasianet spoke with three people who received multiple threatening phone calls starting early in the week. The anonymous callers tended to echo government talking points about how the draft law is merely a transparency measure. If the person is hung up on, usually someone else tends to call again from a different number.
What is worrying, said Revaz Topuria, founder of the education-focused civil society organization Franklin Club and a lecturer at the University of Georgia, is that the mystery callers seem to have done their research on how the people they are calling have taken part in anti-“foreign agents” law activities, whether protesting, organizing demonstrations, or criticizing the government.
“The first guy that called me, he repeatedly asked me, ‘Why are you trying to change and poison the minds of young people?’” he told Eurasianet.
Topuria said he received more than 18 calls from May 7-9. His father was also awakened in the early morning by a mysterious caller who swore at him, one of many cases of the callers contacting family members. Topuria’s father assumed the person was drunk and hung up.
Another civil society activist said that he had been called 37 times as of May 9. The callers threatened to kill him if he did not stop helping organize the protests. When he got in touch with his family, he found out that his mother, father, brother, and uncle had also received mysterious calls.
He recalled that they told his mother that “her son’s casket will be at her home if I don’t stop.”
On May 8, Georgians saw a spate of seemingly coordinated assaults play out across the capital, Tbilisi. Unknown assailants attacked Dimitri Chikovani, head of public relations for the main opposition party, the United National Movement; Lasha Ghvinianidze, a demonstration organizer; and Gia Japaridze, a professor at the University of Georgia and brother of Zurab Japaridze, founder of the Girchi – More Freedom party.
The phone calls and physical attacks recall earlier eras of Georgian politics, when it took much more than parliamentary debate to settle policy disputes and power struggles. Violence was an ever-present feature of politics in newly independent Georgia during the early 1990s. Later, in 2012, the now ruling Georgian Dream coalition came to power amid dissatisfaction over the previous United National Movement-led government’s rough handling of anti-government protesters.
Some observers in Tbilisi also draw comparisons to Ukraine’s “titushky,” or thuggish men in plain clothes who aided the state security services by provoking violence during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests.
“This is aimed to threaten those who express their views in the protests or voice concerns otherwise,” said Kety Abashidze, a Tbilisi-based human rights lawyer. “And this also is potentially a crime because the threats have been quite serious.”
Abashidze contends that the intimidation is a preview of things to come should Georgian Dream succeed in adopting the “foreign agents” law. She said the government will use the law as a blunt force instrument to silence its critics and secure reelection in a parliamentary vote scheduled for this fall. Party officials have said as much.
Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, referring to the main opposition party at a rally on April 29, said that “after the elections, the National Movement will strictly answer for all the crimes it has committed against the Georgian state and the Georgian people over two decades.”
There are worries that this could apply to individuals outside of politics, too. On May 8, Shalva Papuashvili, speaker of parliament, announced that the government is planning to create a database of people who it claims have made threats or engaged in violence during protests against the “foreign agents” law. “All measures will be taken against these people within the framework of the constitution and the law,” he said at a briefing.
Later that night is when the attacks began.
Georgia’s ongoing protests experienced a lull before and after Orthodox Easter on May 5, when many businesses closed for the holiday. Opponents of the “foreign agents” law are now gearing up for a major rally on May 11. Georgian Dream has announced that parliament will begin debating the draft law for the third and final time on May 13.
Georgia’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, has promised to veto the legislation, but Georgian Dream has a sufficient majority in the legislature to override presidential opposition.
Meanwhile, threatening calls were still being made to opposition figures during the day on May 10. How the callers obtained the addresses and phone numbers of prominent politicians and civil society figures remains a mystery, although Bolokadze claimed that contact information could be circulating via Telegram channels.
In a statement released on May 9, the country’s ombudsman, Levan Ioseliani, called for an unspecified law enforcement “response” into the acts of violence. The statement did not clarify if that meant investigations, but few expect the government to follow up, much less identify and prosecute the perpetrators.
“This is a systemic problem,” Abashidze said, referring to the instances of violence and intimidation. “And to see it come back over and over, it’s extremely worrisome for a country with a fragile democracy.”
