A man who filmed a Georgian MP stealing and throwing an orange at him has been fined for provoking the attack, by insulting MPs over their support of the foreign agent law.
Aleksandre Samkharadze, 29, was fined ₾1,000 ($370) on Monday. He was charged with petty hooliganism after publishing footage of himself hurling insults at MPs leaving parliament after they overruled President Salome Zourabichvili’s veto of the controversial law on 28 May.
In the footage, Samkharadze is heard shouting ‘rats’, ‘slaves’, alongside obscenities at MPs in their cars near parliament. Upon hearing the insults, MP Viktor Japaridze is seen exiting his car, stealing an orange from a nearby store, and throwing it at Samkharadze.
During his court session on Monday, Samkharadze argued that he was exercising his freedom of speech and expression, and that he was directing his words at politicians.
‘I was broadcasting political messages, and this language is not alien to Georgian political life either. In the video, it is clear that my words are addressed to the MPs and not to other citizens’, RFE/RL quoted Samkharadze as saying.
RFE/RL reported that Samkharadze told the judge that although he used obscene language, which he said may not qualify as freedom of speech, he only began swearing after Guram Macharashvili, an MP, swore at him from his car.
‘MPs are obliged to be tolerant. Guram Macharashvili started using abusive words at me, cursing my mother and making gestures. It happened that I answered his swearing with swearing. It would be fair that if I have to answer for my actions, they should answer for theirs too’, he said in court.
Following the incident between Samkharadze and Japaridze in May, the MP was later accused of discriminating against Mariam Tsitsikashvili, the editor of Fact-Meter, for being of Ossetian descent.
Tsitsikashvili had confronted Japaridze at the airport in Tbilisi for his support of the foreign agent law, leading to her detention on charges of petty hooliganism.
[Read more: Editor detained at Tbilisi airport after confronting MP]
Georgia’s foreign agent law labels any civil society or media organisation that receives at least 20% of its funding from outside Georgia ‘organisations carrying out the interests of a foreign power’. Such organisations are subject to ‘monitoring’ by the Ministry of Justice including forcing them to hand over internal communications and documents and confidential sources. Organisations and individuals who do not comply are subject to large fines, and in some cases, criminal prosecution.
Read in Russian on SOVA News.
