Georgia’s brutal crackdown is aimed at torpedoing the population’s accesssion hopes

The tendency of long-entrenched governments to arrogantly ignore or override the public’s clearly expressed wishes is a familiar democratic flaw, attributable to the arrogance and hubris that stems from continuing, unchecked power. The former Soviet republic of Georgia is a prime example.

Polls consistently show that about 80% of Georgians want their country to join the European Union. The aim of achieving membership is enshrined in the constitution. Yet last week, Georgia’s government, ruling party and thuggish police did their violent best to torpedo hopes of EU accession. That they ultimately fail to do so is of great importance to Georgians and to Europe.

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© Photograph: Zurab Tsertsvadze/AP

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© Photograph: Zurab Tsertsvadze/AP

The Georgian government’s bid to pass Russia-style law has met spirited opposition, mostly from young people keen to lean towards Europe

The finale of Beethoven’s “revolutionary” fifth symphony was met with deafening applause at the National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tbilisi last Thursday night. The cheers grew into a powerful expression of solidarity with the protests outside on Rustaveli Avenue.

People hung EU flags from the theatre’s balconies and shouted, “No to the Russian Law! Europe! Georgia [Sa-kar-tve-lo]!”

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© Photograph: Nicholas Muller/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Nicholas Muller/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

The man, Marc Shultz, posted multiple comments last October under two separate YouTube livestream videos

A California man has been charged with sending death threats to Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who is overseeing the Georgia prosecution against Donald Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.

The man, Marc Shultz, suggested that Willis “will be killed like a dog” in one of several comments he posted under two separate YouTube live streams, according to the US attorney’s office for the northern district of Georgia.

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© Photograph: Alex Slitz/AP

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© Photograph: Alex Slitz/AP

Bill has raised concern country is moving away from democratic norms and closer to Moscow

Nicolas Schmit, the Socialists’ lead candidate in the European elections, said he is “deeply concerned” by the violence in Tbilisi.

In a statement late yesterday, the US state department said Georgia’s western trajectory is at risk.

Use of force to suppress peaceful assembly and freedom of speech is unacceptable, and we urge authorities to allow non-violent protesters to continue to exercise their right to freedom of expression.

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© Photograph: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

‘I have photographed fathers and sons holding hands from Bulgaria to Armenia and beyond. I approached these two as a stranger – and had just seconds before it got too awkward’

A few years ago, while walking my sons to school, I found myself thinking that, although I held their hands daily, one day they wouldn’t need me alongside them, that we would lose that sense of physical closeness. I decided to photograph my own father and grandfather holding hands – but it was the start of the pandemic, my grandfather was 95 and we wanted to keep him safe. We couldn’t meet for over a year.

In the meantime, while walking around Bulgaria’s capital Sofia, where I live, I stopped to photograph a house that caught my eye and a woman came out pushing a man in a wheelchair. I assumed they were going to chase me away, but instead she showed me a framed picture of a young man, aged about 30. She said he was their only son and he had died eight months before. She asked if I would photograph her husband with the portrait.

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© Photograph: Valery Poshtarov

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© Photograph: Valery Poshtarov

Masked police also used water cannon and stun grenades against rally protesting over legislation viewed as authoritarian and Russian-inspired

Michael Roth, chairman of the German Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, has called on Georgia’s leadership to stop the violence and withdraw the foreign agents bill.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said today that he “strongly” condemns violence against protesters and said use of force is “unacceptable.”

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© Photograph: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

Elene Naveriani’s film tells the story of a middle-aged single woman in a remote Georgian village whose life is changed for ever after a near-death experience

Here is a marvellously tender story of loneliness and love which starts with a bigger bang than most thrillers. Etero, played by Eka Chavleishvili, is a middle-aged single woman in a remote Georgian village who is out walking near a steep ravine, collecting blackberries for the cakes she likes to bake. She looks up, transfixed by the beauty of a blackbird – having been, we are perhaps invited to assume, only waiting for this moment to arrive – when she loses her footing and disappears from the frame; film-maker Elene Naveriani switches the viewpoint to something terrifying and vertiginous: straight down to a near death experience.

Etero sees her own corpse in a parallel universe of her own stricken imagining, but this heartstopping near-miss, together with the unwelcome new symptoms of what appear to be menopause, coincide with what could be a whole new lease of life. While listlessly minding the family shop, Etero receives some stock from flirtatious new delivery driver Murman, played by Temiko Chichinadze, and soon she is having a gloriously passionate, sensual and thrillingly secret affair with this man. And in the long stretches of solitude while he is away, now filled with gorgeous wondering instead of dullness, the film shows how Etero must now absorb the paradox – what has ended is not her life, but her 48 long years of virginity. Her life has not been easy. She has desperately missed her late mother, who died of cancer when she was just three months old. But now life has repaid her with a miracle.

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© Photograph: © ALVA FILM & TAKES FILM

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© Photograph: © ALVA FILM & TAKES FILM

EU leads calls for halt to escalating violence after police use water cannon, teargas and stun grenades against demonstrators

Western politicians and diplomats have called for a halt to spiralling violence in Georgia after security forces used water cannon, teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets to break up a peaceful rally against a “foreign influence” bill overnight.

The EU, which has granted Georgia candidate status, “strongly condemned” the violence and called on the government to respect the right of peaceful assembly. “Use of force to suppress it is unacceptable,” foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on X.

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© Photograph: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

In the Georgian capital, 70-year-old Mzia Sabanadze manually operates the pay-as-you go elevator to the bridge connecting the once-futuristic Nutsubidze apartment blocks

The three blocks of flats which step up a Tbilisi hill, linked by a metal bridge, are a concrete reminder of Georgia’s Soviet past.

The state-owned Nutsubidze apartments and their skybridge opened in 1978, the 140 flats distributed to blue- and white-collar workers as part of a USSR effort to expand urban housing in its territories.

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© Photograph: Robert Badendieck

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© Photograph: Robert Badendieck

A peaceful action at the school near Atlanta, Georgia, was met with violent use of force and 28 arrests of students and faculty

Clifton Crais, a history professor, was walking to class at Emory University in Decatur, Georgia, outside Atlanta, on Thursday shortly before 10am when several students rushed up to him.

“Please, please contact president Fenves,” they begged, referring to the university president, Gregory Fenves. “Ask him to not call the police.” Several dozen protesters seeking the university’s divestment from Israel and opposing a $109m police training center colloquially known as “Cop City” had set up tents on the school’s grassy quad – the size of a football field – several hours before.

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© Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP

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© Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP

REC Silicon says it will soon start shipping polysilicon, which has come mostly from China, reviving a Washington State factory that shut down in 2019.

© Ruth Fremson/The New York Times