"Georgia’s proposed foreign agent laws gravely threaten Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic future and the ability of Georgians to fulfill their own economic, social, and other aspirations," Samantha Power, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) wrote on her official Twitter account.
USAID Administrator urged the Parliament to abandon the proposed law: "I call upon the Georgian Parliament to drop these proposed laws," she said.
The Georgian government intends to pass a law according to which non-governmental and media organizations that are funded from abroad must be registered as “agents of foreign influence”.
As of February 27, two bills have been registered in parliament: one was registered on February 14 and is similar to the Russian law on foreign agents. The second was registered as an alternative after the first was heavily criticized. This second law, according to its authors, is similar to the American law (FARA).
The authors of both bills are the People’s Power movement, formed by deputies who formally separated from the ruling team. People’s Power is characterized by harsh anti-Western statements. Moreover, its members directly admit that this party was created in order to “tell people the truth about the West, which is trying to drag Georgia into the war.”
The bill is criticized by everyone except the ruling party: the local non-governmental and media sector, the opposition, experts and those politicians who were recently in power from the Georgian Dream and even the President of Georgia.
The bill is sharply criticized by Georgia’s western partners from various international organizations, American senators and European deputies. The American ambassador bluntly called it “Russian law.”
On March 2, a protest against the “law on foreign agents” took place in front of the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi, organized spontaneously after the parliamentary committee, despite the protests of media and NGOs, discussed the draft law.
Despite the noise and protests, the two committees - the Committee of Foreign Relations and the Committee of Defense and Security supported the draft law.
Keep Reading: PROTEST AGAINST THE "LAW ON FOREIGN AGENTS" IN TBISILI GROWING, PEOPLE DETAINED
