Czechia sanctions Georgian police officials

(Updated: about 8 hours ago)• 3 min read

▲Zviad Kharazishvili (left), Mirza Kezevadze (middle), Vazha Siradze (right).

Czechia sanctions Georgian police officials

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Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský stated that the country has issued a travel ban for three senior officials from the Georgian Interior Ministry in connection to their role in dispersing pro-EU demonstrations.

On Wednesday, Lipavský said he was the initiator of the sanctions against Georgian officials.

‘Today, at my suggestion, the [Czech] government imposed sanctions on three employees of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The reason is their direct responsibility for the brutal suppression of protests in Georgia last year. In layman’s terms - thugs. And we don’t want them in the Czech Republic’, he wrote on X.

According to Czech media outlet Novinky.cz, those sanctioned by Czechia are the Head of the Interior Ministry’s Special Tasks Department Zviad Kharazishvili (known as Khareba), who is responsible for managing riot police, his deputy Mirza Kezevadze, and Vazha Siradze, the Head of the Patrol Police.

‘This is the first entry on the national sanctions list for human rights violations. For context, the previous entries were for supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine’, Lipavský told Novinky.cz.

‘We are strengthening our security by doing this, we are making it clear that we do not want thugs who torture our theircitizens in the Czech Republic’.

In December 2024, the Czech Senate passed a resolution calling on the Czech government to impose sanctions on those ‘directly involved in ordering or carrying out the violent suppression of protests’, and to ‘consider extending these sanctions to judges who issue politically motivated sentences’.

The resolution also urged the Czech government to ‘pay attention to civil society’ and provide ‘support for the media in Georgia in a situation where cooperation with the government and parliament cannot be expected to develop’, emphasising that Georgia has always been a ‘long-term priority country’ in Czechia’s foreign policy.

For more than 60 days in different cities across Georgia, thousands of people have been protesting against the government’s recent EU U-turn.

Human rights activists in Georgia have suggested that more than 400 people could have been detained during demonstrations against the government in November and December — a large number of whom claimed that they were subjected to physical or psychological abuse by law enforcement officers.

Political tensions in Georgia have been on the rise since the official results of the October 2024 parliamentary elections gave Georgian Dream a large majority, with 54% of the vote. All four major opposition parties have since contested the results and boycotted parliament.

Large-scale protests across the country erupted on 28 November, when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that the country was halting its EU membership bid ‘until the end of 2028’.

On Thursday, disputed Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili awarded the Order of Honour to Khazaradze, Kezevadze, and Siradze, along with other officials of the Interior Ministry, including Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri.

Growing list of sanctions

In December, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Gomelauri and Kezevadze, citing the ‘brutal crackdowns on media members, opposition figures, and protesters — including during demonstrations throughout 2024’.

OFAC’s December sanctions were under the purview of the Global Magnitsky Act, and follow previous US sanctions in September against two other Georgian Interior Ministry officials.

Prior to the Czechia, the Baltic states, the US, and the UK have also sanctioned Georgian Interior Ministry officials.

In the beginning of December, as part of their sanctions packages, all three Baltic states also imposed travel restrictions on Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili.

On Thursday, Don Touhig, a member of the UK House of Lords who is also the Chair of the UK’s Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, spoke to RFE/RL about the sanctions against Ivanishvili.

According to him, Ivanishvili holds a considerable fortune in the UK and he hopes that their government will realise this. Touhig also said he is sure there will be pressure on Ivanishvili.

He said that Ivanishvili’s property should not simply be confiscated and seized, but should be used for something else. Touhig cited the freezing of Russian assets following the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a possible example.