The police have used brutal tactics to suppress a wave of protests that has erupted after Georgian Dream’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced his government’s intention on November 28 to halt the EU accession. Journalists have been asking whether official Tbilisi has solicited advice from Belarus for some of the most alarming methods.
Watchdogs reported that 300 out of 460 protesters arrested since November 28 testified about police ill-police treatment and beatings, with at least 80 of them requiring hospitalization. The Georgian Public Defender announced that at least 85% of those detained between November 28 and December 6 were physically abused, describing the actions of riot police as “acts of torture.” The Human Rights Watch raised alarm, stressing the punitive nature of police actions.
The echoes of 2020-2021 police brutality against peaceful protesters in Belarus have been much talked about in Georgia. TV Pirveli, a broadcaster sharply critical of the government, alleged that the Georgian Special Security Forces learned violent tactics from their Belarusian counterparts. Belorussian dissidents have picked up this report.
The murky trail of cooperation
Georgia and Belarus have cultivated security and law enforcement cooperation, which was stepped up in April 2015 during Alexandar Lukashenka’s visit to Georgia. The two interior ministries have signed an agreement on cooperation in the fight against organized crime, as well as an agreement on readmission and protocol for its implementation. In August 2016, this collaboration expanded to include security services. The visiting head of Belarusian KGB Valery Vakulchik signed an agreement with his counterpart Vakhtang Gomelauri, which included provisions for “operational and technical cooperation.” In December 2017, Gomelauri attended the centennial celebration of the Belarusian KGB and signed an agreement on the exchange and mutual protection of classified information, cementing the relationship.
The Georgian Dream-dominated parliament ratified the 2016 agreement in 2021, already after the crackdown on Belarus protests, which sparked controversy. The lack of transparency concerning the implementation details of that agreement left lingering doubts. Gomelauri, one of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s most loyal allies, currently serves as the Minister of Interior and has been sanctioned by several countries.
Activists and security professionals say the legal and operational framework established by these agreements allows for the exchange of technical assistance and participation in joint operational planning. In principle, this means that the Georgian police and security apparatus could have benefited from Belorussian advice and assistance. But did it?
Georgian journalists and Belorussian human rights defenders say the methods are similar to a certain extent.
Similarities in repressive methods
TV Pirveli‘s report said the Georgian police tactics in suppressing the November/December protests in Tbilisi closely mirrored Belarusian approaches. Belarusian online media Pozirk investigated TV Pirveli‘s claims and found numerous similarities. These include targeting individuals with visible symbols of protest – for example, draped in the Georgian flag – both during and crucially after the protest events – often following them into shops, public transport, and pharmacies; deploying unidentified masked alongside the uniformed police, who snatch pre-identified targets and are particularly violent; use of “beating minivans” parked close to the protest venues; inflicting highly visible injuries on detainees to intimidate others.
Specific types of punishment inflicted on detained individuals – so-called “beating corridors,” rape threats, recording the violence and asking beaten detainees to praise the police, and other forms of humiliation, also bear resemblance with patterns of psychological and physical violence inflicted by Belarus police in 2020-21. Even though the absolute number of detainees is lower in Georgia compared to 2020 Belarus, they are similar when adjusted for population and protest sizes. The Georgian police have shown a higher rate of severe beatings of detainees compared to Belarus. The figures show that 450 out of 6,000 detainees in Belarus were beaten very severely, while the number reached 300 out of less than 500 detainees in Georgia.
Also, in both cases, security forces designed for anti-terrorist and quasi-military tasks were deployed to handle crowd control – a claim that was confirmed by a high-ranking former police official to Radio Liberty in a separate report. There are also similar reports of law enforcement stealing personal belongings such as phones, laptops, money, and jewelry confiscated from detainees.
Pozirk also found some differences that relate more to political decision-making and the will to escalate than police tactics per se. Georgian police, unlike their Belarusian counterparts, did not use firearms and respected state symbols carried by protesters. They also avoided attacking vehicles used by protesters, a tactic widely used in Belarus. While Georgian police usually provoked protesters verbally, Belarusian ones relied more on direct physical provocation. In a marked difference, the police violence has de-escalated in Georgia following the initial surge. In Belarus, the escalation and aggression were sustained until the protest was repressed and the situation returned under Lukashenka’s control.
No smoking gun
Despite the similarities, there is no smoking gun, no positive proof of Belarusian contribution to the repression of the Georgian protests. “Unfortunately, we, Belarusian human rights activists, do not know what information is exchanged between the Georgian SGB and the Belarusian KGB; we can only assume. But it is already obvious that the behavior of the Georgian law enforcers at the protests, at the moments of clashes with the demonstrators, more and more resembles the actions of the Belarusian special forces,” commented Belarusian Human rights activist Roman Kisliak to Pozirk.
Even though the scale of police violence has been extreme, Georgian law enforcement is no stranger to excessive use of force, which has landed successive governments in trouble. Still, the exodus of Western-trained officials from operational planning reported by Radio Liberty informer and the paper trail of cooperation agreements with regimes that do not tolerate protest—be it Belarus or Azerbaijan—suggest that the Ministry of Interior gets its inspiration and, perhaps, training from less-than-democratic regimes.
Georgia’s murky security agreements with Belarus also raise broader concerns about the erosion of democratic oversight. The Georgian Dream’s domination and gradual capture of the state institutions precludes transparency and objective analysis of the developments in the security area.
These agreements with Minsk ostensibly focus on combating crime and terrorism, but their implementation can not be detached from Georgia’s growing authoritarian tendencies. The shared templates and operational cooperation suggest that Georgian law enforcement is actively learning from repressive practices, compromising the nation’s commitment to European integration and democratic principles.