By Felix Light
TBILISI (Reuters) – Pro-European Union Georgians were gathering on Friday for a second night of protests, after the country’s ruling party said on Thursday that it was halting EU accession talks until 2028, in an abrupt freeze to a long-standing national aim.
EU accession is overwhelmingly popular in Georgia according to opinion polls, and the move saw thousands protest outside the parliament building in Tbilisi on Thursday, with riot police using water cannon and gas to disperse them.
Again on Friday thousands massed outside the Soviet-built, fortress-like legislature, carrying EU and Georgian flags. Water cannon were idling nearby, amid a major deployment by police and special forces.
Elene Khoshtaria, a leader of Georgia’s largest opposition party, the Coalition for Change, had her hand broken during Thursday’s crackdown, which she compared to police tactics in Russia and Belarus.
Speaking to Reuters with her arm held up by a sling, she said: “We are not going to give in, we are not going to give up. But I think the international community should think how to support people who really believe in European values.”
The freezing of application talks has been met with widespread anger in Georgia, which has the aim of EU membership written into its constitution.
Hundreds of serving employees of the country’s foreign, defence, education and justice ministries on Friday signed open letters denouncing the freeze in talks as unconstitutional.
A string of private universities have said they are suspending studies amid the unrest, while business groups have called for the government to review its stance.
The ruling Georgian Dream party, which won almost 54% of the vote in an October election that opposition parties say was rigged, said on Thursday that it was freezing membership talks over what it said was EU “blackmail” of Georgia.
The move caps months of deteriorating relations between Georgia and the West, which has accused the Tbilisi government of authoritarian and pro-Russian inclinations.
Georgian Dream has this year passed laws against so-called “foreign agents” and LGBT rights, which critics say are draconian in nature and Russian in inspiration.
The party, which is widely seen as controlled by its founder, billionaire and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, says it still wants to eventually join the EU, and that the laws it has passed are necessary to defend Georgia’s traditional values.
The EU’s ambassador to Georgia described Georgian Dream’s stance as “heartbreaking” on Friday and condemned the crackdown on protesters.
(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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