Three people have been injured in Tbilisi after a car ran into protesters during a demonstration on Sunday night. Two of them were hospitalised, with one suffering a fractured rib.
The incident happened at night near the presidential residence, where a group of people were holding a protest on a pedestrian crossing.
Footage recorded by one of the protesters shows the car moving through the protest at high speed, then turning around and leaving the scene. The police were also present on the spot.
‘Why didn’t you arrest them?!’ one of the protesters shouted at the officers.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs told OC Media on Monday that the incident was being investigated as an act of violence.
Two injured individuals, Mariam Mekantsishvili and Lizi Ubilava, were taken to clinic by ambulance. Mekantsishvili was diagnosed with a fractured rib.
‘Everything is fine, nothing serious’, she later wrote on social media, noting that she had been prescribed 10 days of bed rest.
Mekantsishvili’s lawyer, Lasha Tkesheladze, expressed suspicion that the driver of the car could be connected to the police, adding that ‘if the police weren’t protecting [the driver], that person would already have been arrested’.
The lawyer told OC Media that his client was discharged from the clinic without ever being questioned by the police. According to Tkesheladze, the police only contacted Mekantsishvili on Monday morning to summon her for questioning. However, since she is injured and currently unable to move on her own, Tkesheladze argued that the police should instead come to her home to conduct the questioning.
Ubilava has also been discharged from the clinic.
For over six months, anti-government protests have been taking place in Tbilisi, following Georgian Dream’s decision to halt the country’s EU membership bid.
Daily rallies are held in front of the Parliament building, though demonstrations are also taking place at other locations.
In recent weeks, groups of protesters have been holding gatherings at pedestrian crossings, carrying portraits of demonstrators who were arrested during the protests.
Two weeks earlier, on 7 June, a photographer covering one of the pedestrian crossing protests reported that a bus driver, who had previously shown aggression toward the demonstrators, sideswiped him with the bus while leaving the area. He also released a video of the incident.
There is no information about an investigation into the incident.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
