▲Pride Fest 2022 at Mtastminda Park. Photo: Tata Shoshiashvili/OC Media.
Pride week in Georgia has concluded with the successful holding of a festival, despite attempts by the violent far-right group Alt-Info to disrupt it.
Several thousand people attended Pride Fest on Saturday at Mtatsminda Park in Tbilisi.
Alt Info, an extremist group responsible for organising last year’s homophobic riots in Tbilisi, attempted to disrupt the event.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, hours before it was due to begin, Alt Info attempted to occupy the space of the festival. They were prevented from entering by police, who arrested 26 people including several leaders of the group.
Thousands of members and supporters of Alt Info gathered during the day on Saturday, marching through Tbilisi and tearing apart and burning rainbow flags and NATO and EU flags. The group again tried to move to disrupt the festival but were blocked by police.
Several thousand police officers were present on Mtatsminda throughout the day to protect attendees. Photo: Tata Shoshiashvili/OC Media.
Mariam Kvaratskhelia, the co-director of Tbilisi Pride, hailed the event as a success.
‘The police were on the call and they protected the event very well, preventing attempts at violence, which I welcome,’ Kvaratskhelia told OC Media. ‘We have seen that if there is a political will to protect Pride events, they can do it very well, and we hope that will continue in the future’, she added.
Despite the attempts to disrupt it, the festival proceeded without incident.
It included several events, including a dance competition, a drag ball, and music performances.
Guests could write messages on a statue. Photo: Tata Shoshiashvili/OC Media.The site was decorated with flags. Photo: Tata Shoshiashvili/OC Media.
Irma Chkheidze, 22, told OC Media she was very happy to be able to participate.
‘I am in a great mood. I have feel like everyone here is creating a large island of freedom, which is very important’, she said. ‘Each person is representing their own individuality, which ultimately gives us a very colourful, diverse, and free society.’
Chkheidze called on those protesting against Pride to ‘put everything aside and come here to have a good time and listen to music’. Photo: Tata Shoshiashvili/OC Media.
Another guest, 25-year-old Gvantsa Saganelidze, said her mood matched the environment. ‘And the environment is colourful! there are people here who are expressing love, dancing, smiling and laughing, and therefore my mood is the same’, Gvantsa told OC Media.
Gvantsa Saganelidze celebrated the colourful environment. Photo: Tata Shoshiashvili/OC Media.
Seven ambassadors attended the festival, including the ambassadors of France, Norway, Switzerland, and Israel.
An angry demonstration
As revellers celebrated on Mtastminda, thousands of members and supporters of the far-right extremist group Alt Info roamed the streets of Tbilisi below.
The group had for days been using their nationally broadcasted TV channel to call on people to gather at 12:00 outside parliament to protest the festival.
Protest leaders repeatedly expressed homophobic and explicitly anti-Western messages. Several times Rainbow flags as well as flags of NATO and the EU were torn apart and burnt.
The crowd moved several times during the day. Soon after gathering outside parliament one protester doused himself in petrol and set himself alight, before being pushed into the fountains. He was taken to hospital by ambulance.
When asked why he did it, the man said he did not want to live in a ‘sinful country’ where queer people were protected. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.Far right protesters rip a rainbow flag outside parliament. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
Protesters burnt and tore apart rainbow flags in front of a metal cross which Alt Info installed during the homophobic riots they installed last year on 5 July.
The crowd then marched to the offices of the ruling Georgian Dream party, throwing the remains of the rainbow flags at the building. On the way, there they stopped outside the Patriarchate of the Georgian Orthodox Church to pray and thank the patriarch.
The Georgian Dream offices were heavily guarded by police. Photo: Mariam Nikuradze/OC Media.
The crowd then moved to the offices of the EU Delegation in Georgia, which was also heavily guarded by police, where they burned rainbow flags and those of the EU and NATO.
‘We will kick you out’, Konstantine Morgoshia, one of the protest leaders shouted. ‘You flee from here clinging to the planes’, he added, a reference to the evacuation of Kabul.
Protesters then attempted to move to Mount Mtastminda to disrupt the Pride festival but were confronted by police who turned them away. Protesters reacted with anger, with one shouting that ‘the police’s blood will be shed’.
Police in Tbilisi have prevented a far-right demonstration from moving to Mount Mtatsminda, where Pride Fest is currently taking place. At least 17 people have been detained during the day. pic.twitter.com/QQO4EWILzb
Seventeen people who made it closer to the entrance of the festival were arrested.
After returning to parliament at around 20:00, Konstantine Morgoshia, one of Alt info’s leaders, addressed the remaining crowd and said that they would not hold any counter-protests on Sunday against a planned pro-EU rally.
‘We have nothing in common with the protest tomorrow’, he said.
Before joining OC Media as a reporter, Tata worked as a journalist in the Georgian newspaper Resonance for over two years. She is interested in politics, social issues and especially everything relat
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said that he believed US President Joe Biden’s administration was ‘influenced’ by ‘certain forces’ to impose sanctions on Georgian nationals, suggesting that American institutions needed ‘de-oligharchisation’.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Kobakhidze said that the decision to impose financial sanctions on four Georgian nationals, in addition to travel restrictions on over 60 others, was ‘frivolous and very sad’.
He further suggested that the
Washington has imposed financial sanctions against security officials and the leaders of Alt Info for undermining and suppressing the freedom of peaceful assembly in Georgia. They have additionally imposed travel sanctions on 60 others, including senior government officials.
On Monday, the US Department of Treasury sanctioned the chief of the Interior Ministry’s Special Task Department, Zviad (Khareba) Kharazishvili, and his deputy Mileri Lagazauri.
They also sanctioned the extremist far-ri
The Georgian pro-Russian and far-right group, Alt Info, has announced they will run in the October parliamentary elections through the electoral list of the Alliance of Patriots — circumventing the authorities’ de-registering of their own political wing.
Zurab Makhardze, one of Alt Info’s leaders, said they had reached an agreement with the pro-Russian and ultra-conservative Alliance of Patriots party on Monday.
‘The only chance for us to participate in the elections was [to join] a party
The Georgian far-right group Alt Info has announced they have been given control of a previously unaffiliated far-right political party, a week after the authorities de-registered their own political wing.
Several thousand supporters of Alt Info gathered outside the ruling Georgian Dream party’s offices on Saturday, less than a week after their own political party, the Conservative Movement, was de-registered by Georgian authorities on a technicality.
Addressing his supporters, Alt Inf
