Georgia is on the brink of revolution

00:00 06:56

Svitlana Morenets has narrated this article for you to listen to.

For weeks, the Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi has looked like a battlefield. Thousands of protestors, mostly in their twenties, have been met by riot police armed with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. On the face of it, the protest is about a new repressive bill in its final reading in the Georgian parliament. In reality, it’s the struggle between a government that is turning towards Moscow, and a citizenry who by and large believe the future lies with Europe.

The crunch point comes next week when the Georgian parliament will vote on a bill which, if passed, would label as a ‘foreign agent’ any political or civil society pressure group that receives more than 20 per cent of its funding from abroad. The bill replicates a Russian law which allows the Kremlin to hound independent media and opposition voices. Such a law would also dash any hope of Georgia joining the EU: this week, in reaction to the government’s heavy–handed attempts to disperse the protestors, more than 30 members of the European parliament called on Brussels to withdraw Georgia’s EU membership candidate status. Georgia’s President, Salome Zourabichvili, has vowed to veto the foreign agent bill after the third reading, but the parliament has enough votes to overrule her.

If the bill passes, it could mean revolution. Georgia, a country of four million people, wedged between Turkey and Russia, has already overthrown one leader in its recent history: Eduard Shevardnadze, who was accused of election rigging. That was the Rose Revolution in 2003, which put Georgia on a pro-western path. Russia responded four years later when Moscow-backed separatists seized about 20 per cent of Georgian territory. South Ossetia and Abkhazia have remained under Russian occupation ever since – one of Vladimir Putin’s so-called ‘frozen conflicts’.