The speaker of the Georgian parliament has signed into a law a bill that severely curtails LGBTQ+ rights in the country and mirrors legislation adopted in neighboring Russia despite warnings from the EU.
The move came a day after Georgia’s pro-Western president Salome Zurabishvili — at loggerheads with the ruling Georgian Dream party — refused to sign the bill.
The bill includes bans on same-sex marriages, adoptions by same-sex couples and public endorsement and depictions of LGBTQ+ relations and people in the media. It also bans gender-affirming care and changing gender designations in official documents abroad or on Georgian territory.
“In conformity with the constitution, I signed today the law ‘on family values and the protection of minors’, which Salome Zurabishvili didn’t sign,” speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on Facebook.
The ruling Georgian Dream pushed the bill through parliament last month, a vote boycotted by the opposition and which has fuelled tensions ahead of crucial October 26 parliamentary elections.
Papuashvili said the measure “is based on common sense, historical experience and centuries-old Christian, Georgian, and European values, rather than on changeable ideas and ideologies”.
He claimed that the “law protects the rights of all citizens”.
However, rights groups and Western countries have said that it is discriminatory and creates a dangerous environment for LGBTQ people.
Last month, a well-known Georgian transgender woman was stabbed to death, an attack that came during the push for the law.
The bill also comes after Tbilisi’s recent adoption of an anti-NGO “foreign influence law”, which triggered weeks of mass anti-government protests and Western condemnation.
Some analysts say parts of the Georgian opposition are walking a fine line ahead of the Oct. 26 election between condemning the move to curtail LGBTQ+ rights and not wanting to alienate some voters.
Zourabichvili has long been at odds with the governing party and vetoed a “foreign influence” law adopted by parliament earlier this year. She was overridden by parliament, where Georgian Dream dominates.
The measure requires media and nongovernmental organizations to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad. It ignited weeks of protests and was widely criticized as threatening democratic freedoms. Those opposing the law compared it to similar legislation in Russia which is routinely used to suppress dissent, and accused the governing party of acting in concert with Moscow, jeopardizing Georgia’s chances of joining the European Union.
The South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million formally applied to join the EU in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the bloc halted its accession in response to the “foreign influence” law and froze some of its financial support. The United States imposed sanctions on dozens of Georgian officials in response to the law.
Georgian Dream was set up by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and served briefly as Georgia’s prime minister in 2012. It promised to restore civil rights and “reset” relations with Moscow, which fought a brief war with Georgia in 2008 over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia then recognized the independence of South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian province, Abkhazia, and established military bases there.
Many Georgians backed Ukraine as Kyiv battled Russia’s invasion in 2022. But the Georgian government abstained from joining sanctions against Moscow, barred dozens of Kremlin critics from entering the country, and accused the West of trying to drag Georgia into open conflict with Russia. The opposition has accused the governing party of steering the country into Russia’s orbit to the detriment of its European aspirations.
AFP
