On 11 July on the TV show “Reaction”, the Georgian Minister of Internal Affairs Giorgi Gakharia shed some more light on the use of force against the protesters at the 20-21 June rallies, reported georgiatoday.
Gakharia compared the events from 26 May 2011, which were the anti-government protests aimed at ousting the former Georgian President Mikhail Sakashvili with the protests from 20 June 2019. According to him, there is a fundamental difference between the raids of the two rallies. The raid of the May 26, 2011 rally was a punitive act against peaceful demonstrators and the roads for evacuation were closed by police, while the police actions on the night of 20 June were in self-defense in order to repel the storm against law enforcement agents and the Parliament building.
“The use of force was legitimate and proportional, however, there were specific cases of an excessive use of force”, he said. According to him, the police warned demonstrators four times before initiating the raid, including using a special voice warning. He even said that the police reacted too late then it should have during the protests.
Gakharia stated that during the protests he was together with the ambassadors of several countries in the Parliament building as he watched the developments with them together. The opposition interpreted the statement by saying that Gakharia tried to also shift the responsibility of the dispersal onto the ambassadors and complicate relations between Georgia and its western allies. The Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Nino Javakhadze said that Gakharia’s message was wrongly interpreted. “We were in telephone contact with other ambassadors after the situation got tense. It was natural, as the ambassadors were interested in the developments in central Tbilisi. The minister meant this and not that several ambassadors were present in the parliament building,” she said. The only ambassador who was in the parliament at that moment was the German ambassador Hubert Knirsch who said that he only watched the situation and that he was not interfering in Gakharia’s decision to allow the use of force.
Gakharia’s recent statements were backed by the Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze. “It was legitimate, and our foreign partners share this attitude. The police had to use force. Unfortunately, the dispersal left some injured and if several law enforcement agents used excessive force, the investigation will reveal this,” he stated, adding that no questions will be left unanswered in regards to the 20-21 June events. On 15 July, one agent was arrested for abusing his authority during the protests.
