Friday 29 November, 2024, Tbilisi, Georgia - as regime forces surrounded the Rustaveli theatre in Tbilisi’s city centre, a group of students inside braced for the inevitable: beaten unconscious they will be arrested after an excruciating game of cat and mouse in the theatre’s hallways.
Those who can still move will be forced to perform humiliating rituals before suffering the same fate.
They will then spend the following days in prison under inhumane conditions and likely be denied the medical attention they require.
Many know well that this is the fate awaiting them yet continue to protest. This is about their future: freedom in the European Union or Belarus-style Russian vassalage.
After a rigged election victory on the 26 October, the Georgian regime felt confident.
Opposition groups were in despair after years of efforts to save their country’s democracy appeared crushed by an all-powerful autocracy.
On Thursday (28 November) last week, the regime officially ended the country’s EU ascension process.
A move designed to deal a final blow to the withering hopes of Georgians for a prosperous European future could now mark the beginning of the end for the government.
As so often in history, a totalitarian regime, in awe of its own repression, underestimates the sheer force of a people with nothing left to lose.
For many Georgians this move symbolises a final descent into autocracy. The choice is now resistance or seemingly eternal desperation.
Since Friday, protests have engulfed the country’s major cities.
While a common sight in recent years, today’s situation is different. Significant numbers of Georgia’s governing elite are turning against the regime: whole departments-worth of civil servants are quitting, and the Georgian ambassador to the US, several of her colleagues, the deputy minister for foreign affairs and senior religious figures are resigning in protest.
The brutality of the regime’s efforts to crush the protests is also unprecedented. Regime forces are arresting protestors in the hundreds, beating innocent students and the elderly in the streets and chasing protestors for kilometres through Tbilisi.
In one video two policemen in riot gear are seen kicking an injured young person lying on the street — one kick in the gut, the other straight in the face. Protest leaders are terrorised through violent intimidation, the freezing of their bank accounts, and persistent slander online.
Most European governments have so far limited their responses to calling on the Georgian government to investigate the election and human rights violations; the elections the same government rigged and the human rights violations the same government committed.
Instead of paying meaningless lip service, Europe must now take decisive action.
The following three steps could push the situation over the edge.
1. Financial sanctions on individuals closely connected to the regime would give crucial leverage to the opposition and enable productive negotiations towards a peaceful democratic process. The primary target should be former prime minister and oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, the chief architect of the current regime controlling almost 25 percent of Georgia’s GDP.
2. Withdrawing all recognition of the current government, including the presidential election on the 14 December 2024 (now via an electoral college instead of by popular vote) would isolate the regime and increase pressure to negotiate.
3.European governments must present a clear pathway to democracy in close collaboration with the Georgian democratic opposition. This should include the installation of a caretaker government to manage state affairs and the organisation of a free and fair election under international supervision.
Europe must seize this moment to support Georgia’s struggle for democracy.
As in Ukraine, a people yearning for freedom are fighting a common foe. Compared to the risks those brave students in Tbilisi’s Rustaveli theatre are taking, the support Europe could provide entails little more than a series of headlines to be glanced over for the average citizen.
Yet it could turn the tide in the global struggle for democracy and build crucial momentum. With Russia tied up in a war of attrition in Ukraine and a tumbling autocracy in Syria, the fall of the regime in Georgia — a close ally of Russia, China, and Iran — would strengthen the Europe’s position in what is shaping up to become a decisive year ahead.
Arthur Kroen is a postgraduate student in the history of war at Lincoln College, Oxford University.
Arthur Kroen is a postgraduate student in the history of war at Lincoln College, Oxford University.