Anyone voting for this draft legislation would be responsible for potentially jeopardizing Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic future, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price stated at the briefing.
"We have expressed our consistent concern about this. The law is still going through the process within the Georgian system. But nevertheless, we remain deeply troubled by the introduced foreign agents law, precisely because it would stigmatize and silence independent voices and citizens of Georgia who are dedicated to building a better country for their fellow citizens, for their communities. We are deeply concerned about the potential implications of this law for freedom of speech and democracy in Georgia.
Our point has been a simple one, and we’ve made this point in public but we’ve also conveyed it in private. Anyone voting for this draft legislation would be responsible for potentially jeopardizing Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic future. A law like this is not consistent with the aspirations that the Georgian people have expressed over the course of decades now, the future they have set out for themselves, and the future that we, as the United States, are determined to continue to be a partner to help them achieve.
It’s not just the United States expressing these reservations. Several other partner countries, the EU, the UN, and Georgian civil society groups have also issued strong statements of concern about this draft legislation.
Now, there has been a lot of propaganda about this law. You mentioned one of these untruths: the idea that this law was based on our Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. Our Foreign Agents Registration Act requires people who are agents of foreign governments to register as such. Our law does not affect NGO operations or funding sources. We can provide you with additional details on FARA if that would be of use. But FARA is very narrow; it is tailored to apply only to those agents of foreign government. This is something very different, and that’s why we’re quite concerned about it," Price stated.
