Protest Crackdown Anniversary Marked

• Saakashvili: break up of the rally was “a necessity”

A rally was held on November 7 outside the Parliament to mark a crackdown on anti-governmental demonstrations two years ago, also involving police raid on Imedi television station, during which hundreds of protesters were injured.

Several non-governmental groups, which are fierce critics of President Saakashvili’s administration, took the lead in organizing Saturday’s rally (including Georgian Academy; Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights and several pro-opposition youth groups); although many opposition politicians were present, they have not even addressed the demonstrators with speeches outside the Parliament.

During the rally, which lasted less than an hour outside the legislative body, organizers read out appeals to western governments warning that President Saakashvili’s “authoritarian regime will lead the country to a large-scale destabilization;” they called on the European Union to make its aid to Georgia conditional to democratic reforms and to set deadlines to the Georgian authorities for implementing specific democratic reforms.

Organizers also demanded from the authorities to release “all the political prisoners;” to return Imedi TV to the family of its founder, later tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili and to secure proper electoral environment for holding free and fair elections.

Before rallying outside the Parliament, several hundred of protesters gathered outside the public broadcaster’s office to demand fair and unbiased coverage of political events in the country.

Also on November 7, a group of non-parliamentary opposition parties gathered at a conference called by former foreign minister Salome Zourabichvili’s Georgia’s Way party dedicated to assessment of President Saakashvili’s years in power.

Representatives from the Conservative Party; Movement for United Georgia; Democratic Movement-United Georgia; Party of People; Movement for Fair Georgia; Greens Party; Industrialists; Party of Women participated in the meeting; Levan Gachechiladze founder of pubic movement Defend Georgia was also present. National Forum and Alliance for Georgia were not present.

Nino Burjanadze, leader of Democratic Movement-United Georgia, who on this day two years ago was parliamentary speaker, said it was possible to avert November 7 events. She said that the authorities deliberately used force against protesters in order “demonstratively punish those who dared to speak out against the authorities.”

She also said that after the January, 2008 snap presidential elections “we all made a choice in favor of stability, turning a blind eye on democracy”; Burjanadze, who at that time was an acting president, was referring to assumption that by not pushing for repeat elections, the opposition averted confrontation, but instead had to in fact accept results of the fraudulent elections.  

“August 7 has showed that it is impossible to make a choice between stability and democracy. In case of Georgia it is impossible to be a stable country, if it is not a democratic one,” Burjanadze said.

Salome Zourabichvili, the leader of Georgia’s Way party, said at the conference, that throughout the recent two years, the opposition used “all the methods of political struggle” but failed to influence on Saakashvili’s administration, which, she said, “is heading towards totalitarianism and which we are failing to stop.”

In his remarks made at a meeting with a group of students on Friday, President Saakashvili defended the authorities’ decision to break up the protest rally two years ago as “a necessity”.
 
“Two years ago there was a clash between the police forces and the large demonstration,” he said. “I want everyone to understand it clearly what do I regret about and what I do not regret.”

“The fact that police protected public order so that no one died is something that would have happened in many country if a country is civilized one; this is the obligation of the state and the right of the state.”

He said that “foreign forces also were” behind those protest rallies, but also added that participation of those “foreign forces” was not “decisive” factor.

“We used those methods [to break up the rally]. It was a necessity and it was our obligation,” he said.

He said that the problem was not the break up of the rally itself. “Things should not have come to that point” when the break up became necessary, he said.

“The government and the opposition were radically differing on almost each and every issue and it is now a big lesson for everyone – the lesson for the government that more explanations, more patience and more listening is required and also a lesson that extremism is disastrous. Every time when we attack each other it amounts to sending an invitation to our enemy to attack us.”

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