The head of Tbilisi Pride Mariam Kvaratskhelia believes that the attack on the festival on July 8 and its disruption was coordinated between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and violent groups. It was known in advance from the public statements made by violent and homophobic groups that they were planning to disrupt the festival at any cost. Near the Lisi Lake in Tbilisi, where the festival was to be held, the Ministry gathered hundreds of policemen, although more for show than to protect the freedom of assembly and expression and to prevent violence.
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Day of the Pride Festival
The festival had to be held in a fenced area. Only those who were invited by the organizers or registered in advance could attend.
“We are preparing for the Pride Festival. At the moment, artists, and very famous bands are rehearsing, we are preparing decorations, and expecting guests, including ambassadors, international organizations, activists, and human rights defenders. Not just LGBT people will attend this festival, but everyone for whom democracy, European integration, equality, and minority rights are important in this country. We have been working with the Ministry of Internal Affairs for several months. They will provide security for the event, there are a lot of policemen present,” Mariam Kvaratskhelia made this statement a few hours before the start of the festival. The Ministry of Internal Affairs gave solid security guarantees to the organizers of the event. In the statement issued on July 7, the agency also wrote that it would take “all appropriate measures” to hold the event in a safe format, as well as to protect the freedom of expression and assembly of each person.
“Our goal is to go all the way up there, by all means. We will take the whole area under control and surround it!’’ Zurab Makharadze, one of the leaders of Alt-Info, addressed his assault group, after which they started marching toward Lisi Lake. Makharadze ordered the supporters to divide into two groups and go around from different sides.
“We are blocking from the left side. All three roads leading to that particular area will be blocked. No one can go through there, and if someone is there, we will take them out, because no festival will be allowed there at 4 o'clock,” said Giorgi Kardava, chairman of Conservative Movement/Alt Info.
Radical groups easily reached the festival area. The police were not properly equipped to prevent the expected violence.
Moreover, in some cases, they even expressed solidarity with the intention and behavior of the perpetrators. One of the videos shows how a masked employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs greets and hugs a participant in a violent protest.
Evacuation and dispersal
As soon as violent groups invaded the territory of the festival, the police put the Pride organizers and volunteers into a pre-mobilized minibus under the pretext of protecting their safety. According to the head of Tbilisi Pride, Ana Subeliani, the police opened the way for the assailants themselves and artificially created the impression that they could not control the mass of people and actually forced them [organizers] to get into the minibus.
“Suddenly there was a commotion, things were being thrown, and one of my coworkers was barely missed by something heavy that flew by her head. She saw with her own eyes how the police signaled to the perpetrators to come in. They allowed them into the territory and then basically forced us into the van. Then they drove us through some forest. A police car in front of us stopped, stopped the minibus driver, and told him to let us off the van. This was in the middle of nowhere, I don't even know where we were. We had to fight and shout, after which they were forced to take us to a safer place,” says Subeliani.
The organizers of the festival issued a statement from the minibus, saying: “We had to leave the area. The police were unable to ensure the security of the area.” They warned the visitors of the festival not to go to the territory of Lisi.
After invading the festival, several hundred people raided the area. They burned the flags of the LGBTQ+ movement, the European Union, and Ukraine, destroyed the stalls located on the territory, damaged the stage decorations of the festival, and looted the area for various items and drinks.
Excuses of the ministry and the response of festival organizers
After the representatives of the violent groups fulfilled the tasks set by Alt Info and completely occupied the festival area, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Aleksandre Darakhvelidze made a comment to the media. He said that the police did everything to protect the life and health of each person, but he said nothing about the constitutional rights of assembly and expression, which the state also did not protect on July 8.
“Since the morning, the relevant units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were mobilized on site - Special Tasks Department, Tbilisi City Police, and Patrol, however, quite a large number of counter-rally participants came. We had appropriate cordons on the roads, but since this is an open area, the protestors managed to enter through detours and bypass police cordons. However, we managed to extract the organizers and participants of the Tbilisi Pride event safely out of the area, they did not receive any injuries,” said Darakhvelidze.
When asked why the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not block the roads when the violent groups set off from Vazha-Pshavela Avenue in the direction of Lisi Lake or why special means - pepper spray and water cannon - were not used against them, as it happened, for example, during the March protests, Darakhvelidze responded: ‘’Today, the maximum number of police that could be mobilized in the area were present, however, as you know, it is impossible to provide 100% security and be fully protected, especially is an open area. We have been talking about these risks all the time, but you can see that a very large number of counter-protesters came.”
According to the head of Tbilisi Pride Anna Subeliani, a number of meetings were held between the festival organizers and high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, including Alexander Darakhvelidze, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs was well aware of where the event was planned to be held.
“At each meeting, we asked what their assessment of this area was. All of those meetings are logged. They emphasized that this area is much easier to protect than last year's festival area, which, by the way, they protected very well. This aspect was also agreed with Aleksandre Darakhvelidze. He is a liar.
All meetings were attended by representatives of the United Nations, the European Union, the American Embassy, and the Public Defender, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave an ‘’unconditional guarantee that each closed event planned within the Pride Week would be well protected:
At one of the meetings, Aleksandre Darakhvelidze directly told us that not only the entire police units would be withdrawn from Tbilisi, but also 5-6 thousand policemen would be brought from Eastern Georgia, who would effectively stand up to these radical groups. If there was an escalation, they would have robocops, heavy equipment, and water cannons. They gave us guarantees of a fairly high standard of protection and mobilization, and from what we could tell visually, they were quite well prepared. They were mobilized in large numbers and it gave us the feeling that they were really going to protect us,’’ says Ana Subeliani.
Representatives of the LGBTQ+ community made the decision to hold a closed event after past experiences, including the events of May 17, 2013, and July 5, 2021, showed that the state cannot protect their right to public assembly.
‘’We know that we have already lost the right to public assembly, although in previous years it was still possible to protect the festival in a closed area. This was not the case this year, and the state brought violent groups upon us, which is a real setback in terms of human rights and sabotage of European integration,” says Tamar Jakeli, representative of Tbilisi Pride.
Response from the president and diplomatic corpse
The President of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, criticized the law enforcement agencies at an emergency briefing. According to her, people were not given the opportunity to hold their private event that was planned in advance, agreed with the law enforcement officers, and organized in a closed space, for which the law enforcement structures had given a promise of protection, and thus, all necessary measures should have been taken.
“Today, the assurances given by the Constitution of Georgia were violated in the country: article 17, which says that the right of expression would be protected for everyone, and Article 21 - the right to freedom of assembly. From this we can surmise that any events that some radical group doesn't like the form or content of will probably fail if the law enforcement agencies act in the way they did today,’’ said the president.
The embassies of the United States of America and Great Britain, as well as the European Union and ambassadors of various countries, reacted to the raid on the Pride Festival in Georgia. They called on the authorities to demonstrate that violence is unacceptable and to hold accountable all those who aggressively interfered with peaceful gatherings.]
The Ministry of Internal Affairs has arrested only two persons. Administrative proceedings against them are being carried out under the articles of disobedience to the legal request of the policeman and petty hooliganism. The Ministry of Internal Affairs also started an investigation under the article of robbery in connection with looting the festival area.
