Last Day of People’s Assembly Protests

Five-day street protests by the People’s Assembly, an umbrella opposition movement led by ex-parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze, ended violently shortly after midnight on May 26. After protesters, gathered on the Rustaveli Avenue, rejected an offer to relocate their protest somewhere else to give way to a military parade on May 26, authorities sent riot police, which encircled the protest venue and dispersed the rally using truncheons, rubber bullets, water cannons and teargas.