Author: Lucy Papachristou
(Reuters) – Giorgi Gakharia, Georgia’s former prime minister who now heads one of the country’s main opposition groups, was hospitalized after being severely beaten late on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for his party told Reuters.
Ana Buchukuri said Gakharia suffered injuries to his face and head during an attack by several men in a hotel lobby in Batumi, a city on the Black Sea coast.
“He was brutally beaten, but he survived,” she said.
Gakharia announced that he is in stable condition in a post on Facebook (NASDAQ: ) on Wednesday.
His party, For Georgia, called the attack a “brutal, coordinated group attack” and said the government was to blame.
“This politically motivated attack is a clear attempt to intimidate the opposition and suppress dissenting voices,” the party said in a statement carried by the Interpress news agency.
Georgia has been plunged into political crisis following October’s parliamentary elections, which the opposition claims were stolen by the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party. GD, in power since 2012, denies any wrongdoing.
Georgians have staged nightly protests in the capital Tbilisi and other cities since November, when the government said it would freeze EU accession talks until 2028.
Pro-EU protests have been met with crackdowns by the police, and human rights groups report hundreds of arrests and beatings. The government defended the actions of the police.
“Physical retaliation and incitement of violence against citizens by members of the ‘Georgian Dream’ party have become part of the political landscape,” the Georgian Young Lawyers Association, a human rights group, said in a statement about the attack on Gakharia.
“The ineffective reaction of investigative bodies and the practical disregard for crimes committed against protesters, journalists and representatives of political parties worsen the criminal situation in the country.”
A spokesman for Georgian Dream did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The attack on Gakharia, who served as Georgia’s prime minister from 2019 to 2021, follows other attacks on opposition figures and prominent journalists in recent months.
Nika Gvaramia, leader of the Coalition for Change party, was knocked to the ground and knocked unconscious while being taken into custody by police in Tbilisi in December. He was later sentenced to 12 days in prison for petty hooliganism and disobeying the police.
Buchukuri, the spokeswoman, said the identities of the Gakhario attackers had not been established and that the party had requested that any hotel security footage be handed over to police.
(Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou, editing by William Maclean)
