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Just over a year ago, mass protests in Tbilisi stopped a law aimed at tightening control of civil society. Now the government is making a new attempt. A law against foreign agents was also passed in Kyrgyzstan.
The ruling party in the South Caucasus republic of Georgia still wants to enforce a law that failed in 2023. The Russian-style law is intended to curb foreign influence on civil society.
The Georgian Dream party has put the draft back on the parliamentary agenda, said parliamentary group leader Mamuka Mdinaradze on Wednesday in Tbilisi. All non-governmental organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad must register as representatives of foreign powers.
In Kyrgyzstan, the president passed a similar law last week. The government now also has the power to dissolve organizations that do not comply with the law.
Mdinaradze alleged on Wednesday that the non-governmental organizations were primarily promoting projects that benefit the opposition with outside help. They spread “pseudo-liberal ideologies,” carried out LGBT propaganda, and took a front against the Orthodox Church in Georgia, he said, according to media reports.
Russia as a role model?
There is a similar law in Russia. It is used to largely silence civil society actors. Since its introduction in 2010, it has been continually tightened.
“At first only NGOs were affected, then the media or individual people. “Later, someone could be called a ‘foreign agent’ just because he or she had spoken publicly about a certain topic,” explains Calum MacKenzie. The SRF correspondent is in Tbilisi.
The laws in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan are not as comprehensive as in Russia. Nevertheless, they cause unease in both countries. In both Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, governments have taken steps to undermine democracy and suppress critics.
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In Russia, the law has been successfully used to target any critics of the government or independent media and civil society organizations.
Reuters/Maxim Shemetov (03/24/2024)
Independent media and NGOs are very often dependent on donations and money from abroad. “If a regime declares them to be ‘foreign agents’, it can argue to the outside world that it is just about creating transparency. “But it’s about restricting and delegitimizing unpopular organizations and people,” explains MacKenzie.
In Georgia, for example, the new law requires independent media to declare that they “represent the interests of a foreign power”. Such a stamp is highly problematic for a medium that is already critical of the government and is already having a hard time.
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Critics of the law in Georgia fear that the tightening could endanger the path to the EU. That’s why Georgians are once again rebelling against the government’s plans.
Reuters/Irakli Gedenidze (04/09/2024)
The plans are beneficial for Russia. With the new law, Georgia is moving away from the pro-Western course that a large majority of the population actually supports. That’s why the opposition accuses the government of being pro-Russian.
“In reality, the governments in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan are less pro-Russian than simply pro-maintaining power and pro-self-enrichment. They are primarily interested in winning the elections by any means, no matter how unfair. In Russia, Putin has developed a variety of strategies to stay in power. They are copied by other autocrats,” says correspondent MacKenzie. Many governments see Russia as a role model not for ideological reasons, but for very pragmatic reasons.