U.S. Ambassador Slams Garibashvili for Failure of Leadership in Dealing with Violence

U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, Kelly Degnan slammed yesterday Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili for the lack of “forceful leadership” to deal with homophobic violence in downtown Tbilisi on July 5, which left at least 53 journalists injured.

“We would look to Prime Minister play a leading role in calming situation, where violence is being used and condemning the use of violence against Georgian citizens and certainly against journalists, so it was disappointing that we did not see more forceful leadership role on those days,” highlighted the U.S. Ambassador.

She said the “U.S. has worked hard with the law enforcement agencies in Georgia to improve their capability to do crowd management, so we were disappointment that training and equipment was not deployed when it became obvious that there were those in the crowd that wanted to resort to violence.”

“I am sure that majority of Georgians do not support violence in any situation, but certainly not violent attacks against peaceful citizens, journalists doing their jobs,” Kelly Degnan noted.

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