Legalizing Repression: How Georgia’s New Laws Set the Stage for Silencing Dissent
In an escalation of oligarchic control, the Georgian government is moving to further restrict civil society groups from accepting grants without prior approval. According to the parliament’s website, the initiators are seeking expedited consideration due to the “special importance of ensuring state sovereignty.” This is just the latest sign of increasing hostility by the Georgian government towards civil society and a rollback in democratic processes.
The attacks are not new. Human Rights First’s Maya Fernandez-Powell previously reported on Georgia’s new “foreign influence law” and its disturbing alignment with Russia, warning it could be used to silence NGOs who dissent by forcing those that take foreign funding to register as foreign agents. Now, close to a year later, an add-on bill, the “Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)” was adopted in March and aims to further broaden the scope of its predecessor.
The new FARA bill broadens its scope to include not only NGOs but also media outlets, companies, or even individuals deemed to be acting in the interests of a foreign state. This bill also introduces prison time for noncompliance, while the previous ‘foreign influence law’ only established fines as punishment. Registered individuals and groups must also mark their public statements as coming from a “foreign agent.” Under this broad scope, individuals who receive money from their relatives abroad can fall under the scope of the law if they engage in political activities. This sweeping expansion will enable the government to continue to silence dissent.
This type of attack on civil society is not isolated to Georgia. For example, Russia adopted a foreign agents law in 2012, which has been used repeatedly to crack down on political opposition, closing organizations and jailing dissenters. Following this, the past several years have seen countries like Kyrgyzstan, Slovakia, Hungary, and most recently Kazakhstan adopting and introducing similar laws.
In a briefing with the U.S. Helsinki Commission, experts—including Jasmine D. Cameron, Senior Legal Advisor for Europe and Eurasia at the Center for Human Rights, American Bar Association; Dr. Lincoln Mitchell, Associate Professor and Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs; and Martina Hrvolova, Chair of Friends of Slovakia—described how “authoritarian regimes use the designation of foreign agents to stigmatize and discredit organizations and individuals and to give the government the right to involve itself not only in an organization’s finances, but also in its activities.” Georgia’s adoption of these laws is a warning to civil society members that it can and will do anything in its power to silence opponents under the guise of legality.
Proponents of these adoptions justify these laws as providing transparency for foreign funding and influence, but in reality, they are used to control and restrict democratic ideals and processes. The pattern remains the same: these laws are implemented in a climate of increasing repression of civil society, including NGOs, human rights activists, independent media, and election observers. They emerge in what had been comparatively democratic civil societies, slowly chipping away at democratic foundations and paving the way for a slippery descent into authoritarian regimes.
As Kirill Korotee, National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, says, “‘Foreign agents’ laws are potent tools for rulers who hope to make themselves irreplaceable; for would-be dictators, they are packaged in justifications that aim to distract the public from their true intent.”
Georgia continues to tighten its repression of civil society with violent crackdown on protests, alleged torture of arrested protestors, and firing 700 civil servants for supporting pro-European Union conversations. The Georgian government’s overreach is a startling symptom of democratic backsliding, the latest development in a series of authoritarian moves the leadership has made.
