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The walls are closing in on civil society groups and media in Georgia [1]
['Irakli Machaidze', 'Alexander Thompson']
Date: 2025-07
Court bailiffs eject a man from Tbilisi City Court on 12 June 2025, during the trial of Mate Devidze, an activist arrested during an anti-government protest last November. (Photo: Mariam Nikuradze /oc-media.org, n9.cl/a9r3j)
Having decapitated political opposition in the country, the ruling Georgian Dream party is now moving to mop up what remains of independent civil society organizations.
The focus for Georgian Dream appears to be shielding itself from scrutiny from NGO and media watchdogs. On June 26, Georgia’s rubber-stamp parliament passed a law restricting photography, as well as video and audio recording inside court premises, a move that critics say undermines transparency in a judicial system already severely compromised by the government. Courtrooms of late have collectively become the government’s primary arena for silencing dissent.
Under the new rules, only court-authorized recordings are permitted. The change comes as proceedings against protesters arrested during demonstrations near their final stages, with key verdicts expected in the coming weeks and months.
The move will enable Georgian Dream to avert the type of public embarrassments that have occurred during recent trials, when police officers were caught lying on the stand. Several activists also used courtroom appearances to deliver defiant, widely shared messages denouncing government abuses.
To further cement the government’s control over the judiciary, the bill also grants judges an almost two-fold pay raise, even as several senior judges remain under sanctions from Western countries, including the US, the UK, and the Baltic states.
“These amendments substantially expand and simplify mechanisms for punishing judges, thereby further strengthening the power of the [government],” warned a joint statement from leading watchdog organizations. “The amendments … practically completely prohibit providing documented information to the public about judicial processes.”
Increasing pressure on government critics, parliament also on June 26 passed amendments to the Law on Freedom of Speech and Expression, enacting a redefinition of defamation that shifts the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused. Another change removes a safeguard that protected journalists and others from being punished for refusing to reveal a confidential source, a move media watchdogs say puts investigative journalism at serious risk.
The Media Advocacy Coalition warned that the new legal framework “effectively dismantles media, encourages journalists into self-censorship, and ultimately destroys critical public discourse.”
Authorities are already busy using previously adopted legislation to muzzle critics. Since June, the country’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, a government body empowered to enforce legislation, has sent inspection orders to nearly all major civil society organizations, citing allegations relating to the ‘foreign agents’ law and Georgia’s version of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The Bureau is demanding access to sensitive data, including private information about individuals these groups are defending.
Targeted organizations have responded to the inspections, stating, “We will not release information about people under our protection… [Georgian Dream leader Bidzina] Ivanishvili, as part of his repressive policy, is trying to destroy Georgian civil society organizations, like Putin’s Russia.”
International monitors are taking notice of Georgian Dream’s fast turn towards authoritarianism. For example, the latest Eastern Partnership Index shows a 38 percent drop in the country’s score on democratic rights, elections, and political pluralism, a 20 percent decline in judicial independence and a 28 percent fall in freedom of expression and assembly.
“Georgia continues to lag not only behind the EU candidate countries – Moldova and Ukraine – but also remains behind Armenia in all categories of Democracy, Good Governance and the Rule of Law, except for Equal Opportunities and Public Administration Reform,” the report states. While there is some modest progress in areas like market economy and energy policy, the authors make clear: these gains “are marginal and overshadowed by the government’s systematic assault on democratic values.”
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