“Just so that you know: the street where the OSCE chairperson (who is also the Finnish foreign minister) is standing is the capital city’s main thoroughfare. What you observe is the scene of a few dozen radicals, who stormed the presidential palace a few days ago and injured 25 police officers, two of them gravely, blocking the road, in violation of the law,” stated Shalva Papuashvili, the Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, in response to Finnish FM Elina Valtonen’s attendance at a rally on Rustaveli Avenue on Tuesday evening.
According to Papuashvili, Georgian legislation, like that of any OSCE member country, guarantees the right to assemble freely and everywhere. He added that roadblocks are only justifiable when the sheer number of people cannot be accommodated on the sidewalk.
“Finnish minister may not be aware of this, but she would not be able to name a single case when this right was violated by the Georgian state in the last 13 years.
You also see, right behind the minister, the square in front of the Parliament building, where a crowd ten times greater than those few dozen blocking the road, including the Finnish minister herself, could be easily fitted for a peaceful assembly, without blocking the traffic.
What the Finnish Minister and the OSCE chairperson is doing right there is a violation of Georgian legislation. It also violates Article 41 of the Vienna Convention, which, ironically, was adopted in the same city where the OSCE is headquartered.
What she thus shows to Georgian people is that she supports the violent coup organizers and that the rules-based international order is an empty phrase.
Also, it seems Finnish authorities are much less lenient towards the road-blocking protesters in Helsinki than in Tbilisi,” Shalva Papuashvili posted on his X social media.
