Georgian poet Zviad Ratiani has been sentenced to two years in prison on charges of slapping a police officer during a protest.
Ratiani was initially charged with ‘assaulting a police officer’, which carried a sentence between four to seven years. In a last minute change, however, similar to journalist Mzia Amaghlobeli’s case, Tbilisi City Court downgraded the charge to ‘resisting, threatening, or using violence against a protector of public order’.
During his closing statement, Ratiani emphasised that no matter the sentence given, ‘my future can never be harder than that of those who stand on the side of this injustice’.
‘Almost a year ago the police beat me up, broke my bones, and the judge locked me up in a detention cell, where I saw other young people, beaten, tortured. And when I returned to Rustaveli [Avenue] after eight days, I saw the parents of these young people, and I couldn’t greet them because I was ashamed’, he said regarding his first detention in late 2024.
‘I was bothered by my conscience — because I was sleeping in a bed, working on my unnecessary texts, surrounded by the care of the woman I love. Not because I am better than anyone else’.
He emphasised that he did not consider his slap something to either be proud, nor shameful, while also not considering it a crime.
‘Mzia Amaghlobeli — a fighter, a principled, worthy person — was insulted, humiliated, and after that, as someone whose dignity was violated, she slapped the abuser. After that, we’ve been witnessing a ritual murder of this woman’, he said.
Amaghlobeli, the founder of media outlets Netgazeti and Batumelebi, slapped Batumi Police Chief Irakli Dgebuadze in January, leading to her immediate imprisonment. Numerous independent media and civil society representatives described her arrest as a premeditated provocation, pointing out that just moments earlier, some of her acquaintances had also been unexpectedly detained at the same location, and that Dgebuadze had verbally insulted her. Like Ratiani, she was eventually sentenced to two years in prison.
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In his closing statement, Ratiani also discussed the case of detained teacher and activist Nino Datashvili, highlighting how ‘the colleagues of these boys [referring to the court bailiffs], or even they themselves, I don’t know, I don’t recognise them — dragged her, humiliated her, and after she tried to defend herself, she was arrested, they wanted to send her to a psychiatric hospital’.
Datashvili was remanded to a pre-trial detention facility on 20 June after she was accused of ‘assaulting a court bailiff’ during the trial of eight anti-government protesters, a crime punishable by a fine or imprisonment from four to seven years.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
Ratiani was originally detained on 23 June during the nightly protest near the parliament building in Tbilisi.
Video footage from that night showed a police officer claiming that Ratiani had ‘approached an officer and hit him without any reason’.
A separate video snippet, purportedly from a surveillance camera and without sound, was aired by the pro-government TV channel Rustavi 2 allegedly showing Ratiani speaking to a man leaning on a police car surrounded by several uniformed officers. Ratiani then suddenly slaps the man in the face before being detained by the same man and two other officers.
According to his lawyer Mariam Pataridze, prosecutors accused Ratiani of slapping the chief of the Didube–Chughureti Patrol Police Department, Teimuraz Mishveladze.
Ratiani was an active participant in the ongoing daily protests against the government which began in late November against the government’s decision to freeze Georgia’s EU membership bid.
On 29 November, he was detained for petty hooliganism and disobeying police and was severely beaten after the arrest, as result of which he suffered a broken rib, broken nose, and other injuries. He was given eight days of administrative detention as a result.
Xandie (Alexandra) Kuenning
