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Georgian Dream probes 2019 crackdown it led, targets ex-ally Gakharia

An injured protester during the 2019 Gavrilov’s night protests. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
An injured protester during the 2019 Gavrilov’s night protests. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.

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Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has launched ‘investigative actions’ into the violent dispersal of the 2019 Tbilisi protests, citing a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). However, critics have pointed to the timing of the probe and claimed potential political motives are behind it.

The investigation was announced on 11 July — the same day police unexpectedly blocked Tbilisi’s central Rustaveli Avenue and began conducting what officials described as ‘investigative experiments’ near the parliament building. Since then, the office has brought demonstrators and journalists who were injured during the 20 June 2019 crackdown to the site, asking them to recount how they were harmed.

‘This is about whether the actions carried out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs [on 20 June 2019] were proportionate and whether the operation was properly planned’, prosecutor Mariam Berdzenishvili said, adding that ‘all necessary investigative measures are being carried out in this regard’.

The spontaneous protests on 20 June 2019, dubbed Gavrilov’s Night, came in response to the Georgian government’s invitation to Russian Communist Party MP Sergei Gavrilov to address the Georgian Parliament from the speaker’s seat as part of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy. After some protesters attempted to enter parliament, police began dispersing them using tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets.

At least 240 people were injured and at least two individuals suffered traumatic and permanent eye injuries as police indiscriminately opened fire on the crowd with rubber bullets. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 80 police officers were among those injured during clashes. The violent dispersal led to a series of sustained protests demanding then-Interior Minister Giorgi Gakharia’s resignation.

Shortly after the crackdown, the Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into the possible abuse of power by police officers. However, critics have long pointed to the investigation’s ineffectiveness.

‘Investigative experiments’ conducted near the parliament building. Screengrabs from videos by Georgian Public Broadcaster.

A group of victims filed a case against the state with the ECHR in Strasbourg, which, in May 2024, nearly five years after the crackdown, ruled that the authorities had failed to conduct an effective investigation — and ordered the government to do so.

‘The investigative activities on Rustaveli Avenue […] will allow the investigation to fully reconstruct the picture of the crime and identify those potentially responsible’, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in its 11 July statement, adding that it was acting in line with the ECHR’s ruling and recommendations.

Parallel to the prosecutor’s experiments, legal proceedings have continued in Strasbourg. In last year’s ruling, the ECHR did not find a violation of the substantive parts of the rights prohibiting torture, and guaranteeing freedom of expression, assembly, and association — the very rights the group of citizens had also invoked in their complaint.

As a result, the applicants appealed to have the case reviewed by the ECHR’s Grand Chamber — a request that was granted.

Fulfilling the ECHR ruling or targeting Gakharia?

The fact that the Prosecutor’s Office chose to conduct investigative experiments six years after the protest was dispersed — and a year after the ECHR’s ruling — sparked criticism and mockery among government critics.

The Prosecutor General’s actions coincided with the work of a parliamentary investigative commission, which the ruling Georgian Dream party has used to target the opposition — including the opposition For Georgia party, led by former ally and current opponent Gakharia.

One of the two key issues for which Gakharia has come under scrutiny from the commission is the 20 June dispersal. Another episode concerns the construction of a police checkpoint near the South Ossetian boundary line during Gakharia’s tenure as Interior Minister — an action that, according to Georgian Dream, created a risk of war. A separate investigation has been launched into the matter.

This timing raised questions for Mako Gomuri, who lost an eye to a rubber bullet during the 2019 crackdown when she was 19 years old. She was invited to take part in a parliamentary investigative reenactment on 16 July.

Her position is that Gakharia must be held accountable in any case.

‘It’s a bit ridiculous, because until the Strasbourg [court] demanded these investigations be launched, they had no interest in doing so for six years’, she said while being interviewed at parliament.

Mako Gomuri speaking at the anniversary of the 20 June protests outside the parliament in Tbilisi. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.

She said she preferred to take part in the reenactment rather than give the Georgian authorities the opportunity to claim in ECHR’s Grand Chamber that the victims themselves declined to cooperate with the investigation.

Opposition TV channel Formula’s journalist Tamar Baghashvili also agreed to take part in the investigative proceedings. In June 2019, Baghashvili was working for the then-opposition channel Rustavi 2, when she was shot in the arm with a rubber bullet.

‘I asked the prosecutor what woke them up and they told me they had only just received the translation of last year’s Strasbourg ruling, which obliged them to conduct an effective investigation — and that’s why they only started acting on it now’, Baghashvili said.

She called the process ‘ridiculous’, pointing out that the authorities had six years to investigate the events of 20 June.

‘It’s been six years, and not a single hearing has been scheduled in my case in the [Georgian] courts’, she said.

Tear gas being deployed against protesters on 20 June 2019. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.

Gakharia’s party claimed that the prosecutor’s actions — both in relation to the 20 June crackdown and the Chorchana checkpoint case — amounted to an attempt to ‘politically neutralise’ him.

Another opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM), which had been a harsh critic of Gakharia’s record, described the prosecutor’s actions as part of a ‘political conjuncture’, pointing to the timing of the investigative measures.

The Prosecutor General’s Office, for its part, did not consider the time gap as a problem. Prosecutor Berdzenishvili insisted the case had not been shelved, claiming the investigation had proceeded ‘according to plan and with an appropriate strategy’, and that ‘holding an investigative experiment six years later does not, of course, mean that it is without value’.

Gakharia and Georgian Dream’s U-turn

The current criticism of Gakharia by Georgian Dream stood in sharp contrast to their rhetoric at the time when the now-opposition politician was one of their own.

After the 20 June crackdown, ruling party leaders and MPs not only refrained from criticising Gakharia, but praised him for preventing a ‘coup d’état’ orchestrated by the opposition.

Most of his teammates defended their leader multiple times against opposition criticism and, although they acknowledged that there was some excessive use of force during the crackdown, they referred only to isolated incidents and did not question Gakharia’s legitimacy.

‘Gakharia and the Interior Ministry, thank God, managed — with dignity — to protect the state institution from the aggressors, the rebels, and prevented the country from descending into a new disaster’, Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili said  one month after the crackdown.

Tea Tsulukiani, then-Justice Minister and the current Georgian Dream MP leading the anti-opposition commission, stated in September 2019 that, from her perspective, ‘there is no such special operation without flaws. Such a thing simply does not exist in any country or in nature’.

Giorgi Gakharia. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.

The clearest example that Georgian Dream had no objections to Gakharia — at least not publicly — is the fact that just three months after the crackdown, in September 2019, he was promoted from Interior Minister to Prime Minister.

‘I know and am confident that the main reason Mr. Gakharia was chosen was because he is one of the best among us’, Tsulukiani said at the time.

The sentiment changed soon after Gakharia stepped down from the post in February 2021, citing disagreements within the ruling party over whether to arrest then-leader of the UNM, Nika Melia, who had barricaded himself inside the party office with supporters following a court order.

After Gakharia joined the opposition, his former teammates began criticising him over episodes — including 20 June — for which they had previously refrained from criticism and had even justified his actions.

‘Mr. Giorgi, don’t act as if we were the ones who gouged out someone’s eyes’, Tsulukiani told Gakharia in April 2025, during the session of the parliamentary commission where Gakharia was also summoned.

Gakharia told the commission that he had only authorised the use of water cannons and tear gas — not rubber bullets. He said neither he nor his deputies had ordered their use, and that once he learned rubber bullets were being fired, he instructed those responsible to stop it as much as possible — but the shooting continued nonetheless.

However, in response to further questions from commission members, Gakharia added that officers could also decide to use rubber bullets on their own, for ‘self-defence’.

‘Not a single police officer broke the law’, he claimed.

Reiterating past statements, Gakharia again said he fully accepts political responsibility for the events of 20 June.

Explaining why they promoted him to Prime Minister if they disapproved of his tenure at the Interior Ministry, the ruling party once again alleged foreign interference, claiming Gakharia had powerful patrons.

Former Georgian PM Gakharia under investigation over 2019 South Ossetia checkpoint
Gakharia is being accused of creating a risk of war by installing a checkpoint neat South Ossetia in 2019.

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