This month marks the one-year anniversary of Mzia Amaglobeli’s arrest and imprisonment. The highly respected Georgian journalist is one of the country’s best-known targets of a major crackdown by Georgian authorities against journalists and civil society activists in the country.
Amaglobeli’s imprisonment is emblematic of a larger pattern of repression and takes place against the backdrop of a larger struggle for public accountability in Georgia, a country that borders both Turkey and Russia. For more than a year, Georgian citizens have regularly taken to the streets in Tbilisi and beyond to protest major irregularities in the October 2024 parliamentary elections that saw the Georgian Dream party, controlled by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, retake power and withdraw the country from formal talks to join the European Union.
A year ago, Amaglobeli, the co-founder of independent media outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti had been detained for taping a small poster to the side of her local police station in solidarity with peaceful demonstrators in Batumi. While Amaglobeli was released within a few hours, the situation escalated when the local police chief moved to arrest some of Amaglobeli’s family members who were among those had gathered to protest her detention and confronted Amaglobeli in the middle of the crowd, cursing and yelling at her. After being physically grabbed, jostled, and cornered by a group of officers – essentially being provoked – she instinctively responded by slapping the police chief on the cheek, prompting a second arrest.
One year later, Amaglobeli is serving out a two-year prison sentence that has been widely criticized as disproportionate punishment for slapping a police officer after events spiraled the night of her arrest. Her colleagues fear the trial against her and the unprecedented seven months of pretrial detention she was subjected to was a targeted reprisal for Batumelebi and Netgazeti investigative reporting covering abuses of power by local authorities in the city over several years.
The United States, together with the European Union, should stand with the significant majority of Georgian citizens who seek to align the country with the West despite the ruling Georgian Dream party’s efforts to reorient Georgia away from the United States and Europe. Georgia has had a robust cooperative relationship with the West since the country gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Critical steps, including sanctioning Georgia’s leaders for undermining democratic processes and institutions, are needed to defend essential freedoms amid shrinking space for civil society. Supporting Georgia’s democratic institutions is the best way bolster the country’s sovereignty against Russian, Chinese, and Iranian nefarious influence, which the Georgian Dream-led government has welcomed.
Growing repression of civil society
Georgian civil society has been very active since the country gained independence from the Soviet Union and plays a critical role as a balance against the government’s abuses. Taking a page from Moscow’s playbook, the Georgian Dream party has tried to smear the reputations of independent civil society organizations by adopting several so-called “foreign influence” laws resembling legislation adopted in Russia.
Rather than emphasizing general funding transparency, these regulations oblige nonprofits to register as “foreign agents” if they receive more than 20% of annual revenue from abroad. These laws have been used by Georgia’s authorities to harass civic organizations, independent media, and their leaders. An October opinion by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission declared the regulations heighten the risk of “undermining the rule of law, civic space, and democratic freedoms.”
Georgian authorities have also targeted participants in ongoing public demonstrations by adopting laws that increase penalties and provide additional pretexts for arrests, such as for wearing a face mask. More disturbingly, an investigation by the BBC published in December found that Georgian security forces likely added a World War I-era chemical weapon known as camite to water cannons used against demonstrators in the initial protests against the October 2024 election results.
A symbol of a larger movement
“I do not evade responsibility,” Amaglobeli stated in court hearings in reference to her reaction to that evening’s events. But as a cost of defending freedom in Georgia, Amaglobeli is now paying with her health.
She undertook a 38-day hunger strike upon her imprisonment to initially protest the more serious charges against her of “attacking a police officer.” She was taken once to the hospital as her health weakened but quickly was returned to prison without medical treatment. An underlying eye condition has also worsened in prison due to lack of treatment, significantly impairing her sight. After months of requests for medical attention, she was finally granted a visit to an eye clinic in mid-December and awaits test results to learn whether her small degree of remaining vision might be preserved.
Despite these circumstances, Amaglobeli has been more concerned about the future of her country than about herself.
“It is not the prison sentence that scares me – what scares me is what I will find outside once I am released,” Amaglobeli said during a November court hearing in which her attempt to appeal her sentencing was denied. “Will I find a country fighting for freedom, democracy, and a European future? Or will I find a country that has been taken over by Russia without a single tank?”
At the December award ceremony in the European Parliament where Amaglobeli was honored with the prestigious Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, her Batumelebi colleague Irma Dimitradze noted that Amaglobeli called her twice from prison to urge that she remind the world that all Georgian journalists are risking their lives and their freedoms to keep democracy alive. Amaglobeli was also recognized alongside the whole of the Georgian Resistance Movement with the International Award for Courage and Responsibility by the Prague-based Forum 2000 Foundation in October.
Beyond raising Amaglobeli’s unjust prison sentence with Georgia’s leadership, the United States and other Western countries can send a clear message to Tbilisi that its attacks on fundamental freedoms in Georgia are moving the country in the wrong direction by tightening sanctions against the country’s corrupt and oligarchic leadership. Currently, only Ivanishvili, the founder and head of the Georgian Dream party, has been sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for undermining Georgia’s democratic processes “on behalf of, or for the benefit of” the Russian government.
Legislation titled the MEGOBARI Act, the word for “friend” in Georgian, would stiffen U.S. sanctions against individuals who undermine Georgia’s security and stability. This legislation has already passed the U.S. House but is currently stalled in the Senate.
In her letter from prison accepting the Sakharov Prize, Amaglobeli thanked the European Parliament for recognizing the aspiration for freedom shared by the Georgian people. But she also implored the free world to act, writing “Fight with us and for us. Fight as you would fight for the freedom of your own countries. Use every mechanism at your disposal and do so before it is too late.”
