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New Delhi: After two nights of violent protests, Georgia’s ruling party on Thursday said it was dropping a bill on “foreign agents” amid criticism that the draft was inspired by a Russian law and represented an authoritarian shift.
The Georgian Dream ruling party said in a statement it would “unconditionally withdraw the bill we supported without any reservations”. It cited the need to reduce “confrontation” in society.
The draft law requires any organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as “foreign agents” or face substantial fines.
Earlier on Tuesday, the parliament gave it initial approval, but thousands of protesters gathered in front of parliament, carrying Georgian and European Union flags and shouting “No to the Russian law” and “You are Russian” at politicians inside the legislature.
The protesters feared that the draft law would limit press freedom and could hurt Georgia’s hopes of European Union membership.
Vakhtang Berikashvili, a 33-year-old software engineer, said, “We cannot let our country become pro-Russian or a Russian state, or undemocratic. We don’t have any other choice: Georgia is either democratic or there is no Georgia . We will win,” according to AFP.
According to Reuters, Russia is viewed as an enemy by many Georgians, after Moscow backed separatists in the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the 1990s. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians remain internally displaced within the country after several bouts of bloody ethnic conflict.
Speaking in Berlin earlier on Tuesday, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Garibashvili reaffirmed his support for the law, saying the proposed provisions on foreign agents met “European and global standards”.
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