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Lazare Maglakelidze asks to meet by an old warehouse in Tbilisi’s northern outskirts. Here in the quiet, few cars pass along the dirt track winding amid mounds of rusted metal and derelict buildings, the scrap yards and repair shops.
But his caution is hard-won, speaking from behind a mess of gauze, with yellowed eyes bedded in ribbons of vicious purple, a cardboard cast, and a tangle of hooped bandages holding his bludgeoned nose in place.
“Those blacked-out vans they use, they’re nothing but mobile torture chambers,” the 20-year-old student activist told Byline Times.
People need to understand, this isn’t just a couple of guys improvising, it’s an entire system at work. As soon as somebody hears one of the vehicles is free they get all riled up and the threats start coming, how they’re gonna rape you with their batons, because we’re ‘pederasts’ and ‘you guys like that, right?’
Lazare Maglakelidze, activist
On 2 December, Maglakelidze became one of the now-hundreds of people brutalised by the gangs of masked assailants currently roaming Tbilisi, unleashed by Georgia’s disputed government to quell mass protests that have, over the past two weeks, spread to almost every corner of the country following the ruling Georgian Dream party’s decision to suspend the nation’s constitutionally-enshrined bid for EU membership.
Coming hot on the heels of parliamentary elections widely slammed as rigged, critics describe the mounting crackdown as the latest instalment of a violent authoritarian campaign designed to rob Georgia of its democratic progress since independence from the Soviet Union, reorienting a once Western-facing country back toward Moscow’s orbit amid the war in Ukraine. And, despite, sustained support from more than 80% of the population for further European integration.
A Spiralling Political Crisis
In the face of sanctions, suspensions to strategic partnerships and an indefinite halt to government aid from Western allies, Georgian Dream has doubled down on its autocratic course, intensifying the violence visited on protesters and carrying out targeted arrests of opposition politicians, civil society leaders, prominent activists, even beloved actors and poets.
The party has recently announced a slate of new legislative measures including streamlining the process for firing public sector employees who voice support for the growing popular movement, banning face coverings at protests, widening grounds for detention, and introducing harsher penalties for minor violations like graffiti and obstruction of traffic.
The country’s State Security Service has issued warnings that “criminal actors,” backed by “special services of foreign countries,” are forging ahead with plans to foment a “colour revolution” with the goal of disrupting presidential elections on Saturday.
For the first time in Georgia’s independent history, those polls will see the country’s head of state appointed not by popular vote, but an electoral college described by critics as made up almost entirely of ruling party loyalists.
Given Georgian Dream’s rhetoric and increasing use of repressive measures, there’s mounting concern that firebrand anti-Western nominee Mikheil Kavelashvili may seek to institute a state of emergency once he formally takes over the presidential office from the pro-European incumbent, Salome Zurabishvili, on 29 December.
“To keep people off the streets, the most effective way is to declare a state of emergency, imposing curfews and possibly restricting access to the internet as well,” Sergi Kapanadze, founder of local think-tank Georgia Reforms Associates, told Byline Times. “If they do it right before the new year, they’ll be counting on people being in for the holidays, and that things may then simmer down in January.”
“It’s clear that they haven’t been able to repress the protests so far, which are not only ongoing but gaining momentum every day,” he adds.
For the government to resist, simply arresting people is not enough, because the demonstrators have shown they’re not afraid of that
Sergi Kapanadze, Georgia Reforms Associates
‘Nothing But Mobile Torture Chambers’
For activist, Maglakelidze, the deterrent of any blanket stay-at-home order would pale in comparison to the beating he sustained on 2 December after being snatched by armoured, but otherwise plain-clothed assailants, from the frontlines of the nightly demonstration held outside parliament on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue.
“The first thing that happened when they broke ranks was that I was pepper sprayed, that’s how they got me,” he recalls. “I immediately dropped to the ground and put my hands over my head – they got a few good kicks in there, but nothing compared to what happened after I was dragged back behind the line.”
A few hundred metres from where Maglakelidze was detained, the men, alleged to be working under the direction of sanctioned Interior Ministry chief Zviad Kharazashvili, had assembled a small fleet of tinted-windowed vans.
Maglakelidze’s raincoat was pulled over his head and he was repeatedly hit in the face until he lost consciousness, with what other detainees later told him were the men’s fists, knees and boots.
