On 28 November 2024, after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced the halting of Georgia’s EU-integration process, I went to cover the ensuing protest.
As the crowd grew bigger and bigger outside the parliament building located on Tbilisi's central Rustaveli Avenue, riot police took different spots around it. As it neared midnight, they began to disperse the demonstrators.
I was on the fountain structure outside the parliament building trying to document a water cannon targeting camera operators near me when I was also hit, falling. I had been wearing goggles and a separate gas mask, but when I fell, I lost the goggles and the mask got somewhat damaged. My camera broke, I got light injuries, and I was soaking wet — but I continued working with my phone.
Not long after, riot police began to clear Rustaveli Avenue from the other side. I went on the road to start filming, and once again, a water cannon was deployed. In my videos from that time, the scene first appears fine, but at some point, more water cannons were deployed — one short clip shows me starting to film again before cutting it short while swearing. I don’t usually swear, but I was in a moment of shock, because even though the water flow did not directly hit me, the spray covered my face, my clothes, everything — and then it started to burn. I couldn’t move, and it was hard to breathe.
A colleague saw me and took me to an ambulance, where I spent quite some time trying to regain my senses.
People who were waiting for me outside the ambulance, who weren’t even directly hit by the water or the sprinkles, suddenly also felt bad and required medical help in the same ambulance.
While I have been poisoned by tear gas and pepper spray during various dispersals, this felt very different. Usually your eyes burn, you cough for maybe five minutes, but then it goes away. In this case it didn’t. In fact, for almost every single day over the next four or five months I suffered from nose bleeds, something that never troubled me before.
Other people I’ve met with from the protest since then, who were poisoned that very same day, have reported other symptoms, such as the swelling of eyes, coughing, lung problems — some much worse than what I had. And I have always questioned what actually happened that day.
In all the interviews and speeches I gave afterwards, I repeatedly talked about an unknown substance that I believed had been mixed with the water that day. It felt important to underline this issue, especially with the efforts local rights groups were making to request information from the Interior Ministry over what exactly they used during the dispersals that day.
With the recent BBC investigation, my suspicions only grew stronger, though I never would have guessed that a WWI-era chemical could be the culprit.
The immediate response from Georgian Dream officials has raised even more questions, their statements confusing and contradictory.
Indeed, after the results of the preliminary investigation by the State Security Service (SSG) were announced, their spokesperson claimed that a substance was used against protesters on 4–5 December. Yet all the recollections and victim reports recall the poisoning occurring specifically on the night of 28–29 November, a date the SSG never addressed.
Lawyers and rights groups are now collecting stories, medical reports, and other evidence to file a case for an independent investigation. While I don’t have faith in the government to clearly tell people what happened, I hope such an investigation will eventually answer all the questions we have about that night.
