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Diplomatic Missions Urge Gov’t to Protect Pride Activists

Photo from Tbilisi Pride's March of Dignity, 2019. Photo by Ana Tsurtsumia-Zurabashvili

A group of some 20 diplomatic missions in Georgia today urged the authorities to enable next week’s Pride Week celebrations to take place “without participants having to fear becoming victims of hatred and violence.”

The statement comes as the Georgian Orthodox Church has decried the upcoming event as “conflicting with socially recognized moral norms, and aiming to legalize grave sin.” Also, far-right groups and those affiliated with the newly founded ultraconservative movement ERI have announced plans for counter-rallies.

The foreign missions expressed solidarity with the LGBTQ community, and stressed that exercising the rights to freedom of assembly and of expression “are essential in empowering people to overcome their exclusion from political, economic and social life.”

The Constitution of Georgia guarantees everyone’s right to assemble, while the “landmark” anti-discrimination legislation prohibits all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the signatories recalled.

“All States have a duty to facilitate and protect the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly,” the diplomatic missions stressed.

The signatories are the United Nations system in Georgia, the Delegation of the European Union, the Embassies to Georgia of Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the Head of the EU Monitoring Mission.

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