In February, Georgian Dream passed legislation making insulting officials an administrative offence. The legislation provides for fines of up to ₾4,000 ($1,500) or up to 45 days in jail.
Subsequently, on 6 June, the deputy chair of Georgian Dream’s parliamentary faction, Irakli Kirtskhalia, announced that the party would sue social media users over ‘insults’ towards government representatives. Since then, Georgian courts have fined over a dozen activists, journalists, and opposition figures for posts and comments made on Facebook criticising members of the ruling Georgian Dream party.
OC Media has reached the individuals who have been summoned to the courts for insulting Georgian Dream MPs on social media and the lawyers working on their behalf in order to create a list of all the cases publicly available as of publication and the Facebook posts involved.
A few of those interviewed plan to appeal the rulings, and most say they will not pay the fines. Despite this, at least one respondent, pensioner Megi Kipshidze, expressed concern that the fine could be automatically deducted from her pension.
Name: Giorgi Tumasyan (activist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: A Facebook post about Georgian Dream MP Mariam Lashkhi:
‘I have 182 mutual friends with Mariam Lashki. Don’t you feel uncomfortable with the fact that because of your traitor and modern Bolshevik “friend” two Georgian patriots — Lika Lortkipanidze and Tatia Apriamashvili — are jailed?’
Name: Keti Molashvili (activist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: Two Facebook posts, one about MP Tea Tsulukiani and the other about Lashkhi:
About Tsulukiani: ‘You are worse than a slave! The woman who was trying to sue the previous government to the Strasbourg court, now your government has outdone them! I feel pity for you. You used to fight for justice but now you have become an executioner’.
About Lashkhi: ‘This low-class woman, who got into parliament only because she wanted to sneak in European organisations, and only because she could not succeed in this, she took a grudge, and imagined that the whole of Europe were Freemasons and she sacrificed a kid for 12 days administrative detention.
[…]
And the only thing this kid said was down with the Russian Empire and that she [Lashkhi] is a slave to Russia. And indeed they truly are slaves to Russia! Mariam, when you sacrifice a kid to jail, you are not only a slave, you are ethnically Georgian Russian!’
Name: Dea Mamiseishvili (journalist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾3,000 ($1,100)
Reason for the fine: A Facebook post about Georgian Dream’s parliamentary leader Mamuka Mdinaradze:
‘This is a son of bitch, vile, non-human person. Whoever considers him as an authority, they are not any better than this maniac’.
Name: Ana Subeliani (activist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: A Facebook post about Parliamentary Vice Speaker Nino Tsilosani:
‘This vile non-woman’.
Name: Vika Bukia (journalist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: a caption to a Facebook video, which showed Lashkhi walking past the activist:
‘A slave just walked past me’.
Name: Nanuka Zhorzholiani (journalist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: A Facebook post about Tsulukiani and two Facebook posts about Lashkhi, one of which was just a photo showing graffiti on the wall of Lashki’s house reading ‘Slave of Russia’:
About Tsulukiani: ‘Fuck your mother, Tea! And I fuck everyone else’s mothers too who does not hate this woman!’
About Lashkhi: ‘This non-woman dumb, who hears voices of the deep state, sent 19 year old girls to jail!! Hope you die!’
Name: Mariam Geguchadze (activist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾3,000 ($1,100)
Reason for the fine: A Facebook post about Lashkhi:
‘She is a disgraceful, amoral, low class person who talks with freemasons. She does not love either her homeland or anyone at all. A disgusting, opportunistic fern’.
Name: Misha Mshvildadze (journalist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: A Facebook post about Parliamentary Speaker Shalva Papuashvili:
‘Last year he was licking the ass of USAID. He is able to lick any kind of ass, he is versatile, he is Phillip Cocu [a Dutch football manager] of asslicking’.
Name: Tamar Chergoleishvili (journalist and politician)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: One Facebook post calling Tsulukiani ‘non-woman’ and another post calling Mdinaradze ‘a dick’.
Name: Baia Pataraia (activist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: Facebook posts about Lashkhi, Mdinaradze, and Tsulukiani.
About Lashkhi: ‘A few days ago, the dumb and malicious Mariam Lashkhi said no one should dare compare her children to someone else’s criminal kids. And today, she had someone else’s children thrown in jail.
With such cruelty — bearing the guilt of sacrificing innocent boys and girls, and for betraying your own country and your own people - you are cursed!’
About Mamuka Mdinaradze’s statement that the war in 2008 was started by then-President Mikheil Saakashvili: ‘Everyone knows how he does math, but this Russian is a traitor!’
About Tea Tsulukiani’s statement that Georgian soldier Giorgi Antsukhelidze’s death in 2008 was ‘pointless’: ‘Her birth was pointless. And her life is pointless’.
Name: Megi Kipshidze (Pensioner)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾3,500 ($1,200)
Reason for the fine: She shared a Facebook post by Lasha Chkhartishvili, a member of the Labour Party, about Interior Ministry employee Tamta Kimbarishvili with the following description:
‘How you grew up so disgusting, you son of a bitch! What kind of environment did you grow up in? Even your face shows that you’re a witch and there is no way that you can do any better’.
Name: Levan Khabeishvili (a leader of the opposition UNM party)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: A Facebook post about Tsulukiani:
‘I’ll cut her tongue out’.
Name: Giga Makarashvili (activist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: Facebook comments:
About Mdinaradze: ‘slave!’
About Papuashvili: ‘traitor!
Name: Eka Mishveladze (journalist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: She shared a photo on Facebook, where graffiti was shown on the wall of Lashkhi’s house reading ‘Slave of Russia’, with the following description:
‘They let a slave know who and what she is’.
Name: Elene Khoshtaria (leader of the opposition Droa! party)
Type of court-imposed penalty: Fine
Fine amount: ₾4,000 ($1,500)
Reason for the fine: Facebook post
She did not respond to the summons, deciding not to even check the official documentation, nor did she appear in court. She is not going to pay the fine, which was issued after the court found that her post constituted an administrative offence under the new law.
Name: Diana Gogoladze (civilian)
Type of Court-Imposed Penalty: Fine
Fine Amount: ₾2,500 ($920)
Reason for the Fine: A comment on a Facebook post by Lasha Chkhartishvili, a member of the Labour Party, about Interior Ministry employee Tamta Kimbarishvili:
‘A young woman and such a bitch’.
Name: Rostom Zarandia (activist)
Type of court-imposed penalty: administrative detention
Length of prison sentence: five days
Reason for the detention: Comments on Zugdidi City Hall’s Facebook post about spokesperson Magdalena Todua:
‘Braindead and sluggish’
‘You are deleting these comments now, you gave them the right to beat us so you could post this post, you goose!’
‘You are fabricating reality, you are rigging elections, you are a criminal Magdalena Todua’.
The comments were made on a post commemorating the Soviet Union’s brutal crackdown on a pro-independence protest on 9 April 1989.
During the overnight commemoration held by activists near the 9 April memorial in Zugdidi, police violently dispersed activists, injuring several, in order to clear the area for an official commemoration of the event by government officials.
Zarandia wrote in a separate Facebook post that he had left several comments about this on posts by the city hall about the official commemorations, but that the administration kept deleting them.
While other citizens have been administratively detained for allegedly verbally insulting government officials, Zarandia appears to be the only person detained for posts made on Facebook.
