Georgian Dream critics living abroad allege politically motivated attacks by fellow Georgians

In recent days, reports have emerged of at least two incidents in which Georgians living abroad were allegedly attacked or threatened — apparently because of their opposition to the ruling Georgian Dream party. One of them was allegedly physically assaulted.

On 20 April, Levan Moseshvili posted a photo on Facebook showing swelling on his face.

‘I'm okay, folks. He didn’t do much damage. The swelling will go away, and you’ll remain a slave of Russians forever’, he wrote, referring to the alleged attacker.

Moseshvili later told RFE/RL — which published an article about what appears to be politically motivated attacks on Georgians living abroad — that he was walking through the streets of Paris with his wife and young child when an unknown man approached and began hurling insults at him.

‘A stranger came up and asked, “Are you Levan?” When I said yes, he immediately started cursing and threatening me: “Well, fuck your mother, you son of a bitch[...] you thought you could hide in Europe, you servant of the Natsebi?” ’, Moseshvili recalled, noting that the verbal assault happened while he was holding his kid.

Natsebi is a pejorative term for members of the formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM) party. However, Georgian Dream and its supporters often use it more broadly to refer to the opposition in general.

‘Before I put the child down, he bombarded me with hurling curses and threats — just like they usually do [… ] I shouted, “You Russian slave!” and he replied, “That’s just the beginning”, then punched me in the face and ran off. My child got very scared and started crying’, Moseshvili told RFE/RL.

Moseshvili, a member of the opposition party Girchi — More Freedom, linked the attack to his political affiliation and activity on social media. However, he noted that he had never seen the attacker before and had not publicly shared in recent times that he was living in Paris with his family.

‘However, some had commented [in social media] that they would find me even in Europe if needed’, he added.

Another Georgian, Inga Tsiklauri, based in the Icelandic capital Reykjavík, wrote on 17 April on Facebook that a man came to her workplace, addressed her in Georgian, and then immediately began ‘threatening and cursing’ at her.

‘When he realised we had security cameras and I was actually calling the police, he calmed down a bit — but he kept cursing the whole time until the police, who I had called, arrived’, Tsiklauri said in a post, which included a photo of the alleged harasser.

She stated that the incident was politically motivated and related to her outspoken criticism of the Georgian Dream on social media.

Tsiklauri told RFE/RL that the insults and threats against her began as early as the 2024 parliamentary elections in Georgia. According to her, at the time she received information about a Georgian family living in Reykjavík who supported Georgian Dream and was allegedly trying to facilitate the deportation of opposition-minded Georgians from Iceland.

Tsiklauri shared this information in a Facebook group for Georgians living in Iceland, and it was after that post that she began receiving verbal abuse online and over the phone.

According to Tsiklauri, the recent incident is a continuation of those previous events, and the man who came to her workplace threatened her, saying he ‘knows where I live and will always cause problems for me’.

On the same day Tsiklauri posted about the incident on Facebook, a person named Teimuraz Kvatskhava appeared in the comments, stating that he was the man in a photo Tsiklauri had published and effectively confirming that his actions were in response to her earlier post.

Kvatskhava said that Tsiklauri’s post, in which she alleged that a Georgian family supporting the ruling party was targeting opposition supporters, referred to his own family, calling Tsiklauri’s claims a lie and defamation.

However, Tsiklauri does not believe that Kvatckhava was acting solely out of personal motives.

‘In my opinion, this is an order from Georgian Dream targeting opposition-minded Georgian emigrants. In my case, this man is simply hiding behind the claim that it was a personal insult [from me]’, she told RFE/RL.

Until now, the most well-known politically motivated incident involving Georgians abroad took place in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi  in January, between Georgian Dream MPs and an opposition-minded Georgian citizen Lasha Gabitashvili.

The incident began with a verbal confrontation and later escalated into a physical attack against Gabitashvili by ruling party representatives in the restaurant of the hotel where both parties were staying.

Upon returning to Georgia, Gabitashvili reported being attacked again, that time on one of the streets of Tbilisi, by three masked individuals—an incident he believed was a continuation of what happened in Abu Dhabi.

Amid anti-government protests in Georgia, reports about physical attacks, threats, and verbal abuse targeting activists, demonstrators and opposition politicians have become increasingly common.

The incidents have occurred both during the protests against the controversial foreign agents law last year and the more recent demonstrations sparked by Georgian Dream’s decision to freeze the country’s EU membership bid.

Government critics have repeatedly linked the attacks to the ruling party, which has not confirmed its involvement.

In one case, in December, when masked men attacked journalists who were covering a protest live on air, leaders of the ruling Georgian Dream party condemned the violence—while also implying, or outright accusing, their critics of staging the attacks to provoke public outrage and escalate anti-government street protests.

Georgian Dream MPs fined by UAE authorities for attacking Georgian national in Abu Dhabi

On 13 January in the city of Abu Dhabi, Georgian Dream lawmakers attacked a Georgian citizen who had confronted them the day before over the ruling party’s policies.

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