The Speaker of the Georgian Parliament announced on Thursday, October 3, that he had enacted a law restricting the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, thus circumventing the Head of State’s refusal to sign this text. “In accordance with the Constitution, today I signed the law on family values and the protection of minors that President Salomé Zourabichvili did not sign” On Wednesday, Shalva Papuashvili wrote on Facebook.
The deputies of the ruling party, Georgian Dream, of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, approved this text in September. But the president of the country, pro-European and opposed to the government, refused to sign this legislation. Like the one existing in Russia, this text was strongly criticized in the European Union (EU) and by human rights organizations.
As the legislative elections on October 26 approach, clashes are increasing between the Georgian Dream, a conservative party increasingly critical of the West, and the pro-Western opposition that accuses the Government of pro-Russian drift, although Moscow invaded the country in 2008. and supports two separatist republics there.
Officially, Georgian authorities still aim to join NATO and the EU, but the adoption of several controversial laws has fueled tensions with Western countries.
The European Union is alarmed.
The text promulgated on Thursday prohibits “propaganda of homosexual relations and incest” in educational establishments and television broadcasts and also restricts “rallies and demonstrations”. Human rights groups have criticized this wording, which equates incest and homosexuality and limits freedom of assembly.
The European Union estimated at the beginning of September that this document “violates the fundamental rights of Georgians and risks reinforcing the stigmatization and discrimination of a part of the population”.
Georgia was also shaken in the spring by massive demonstrations against another law, this time against “foreign influence” and also inspired by a repressive Russian text. Here too, Western criticism was ignored by those in power.
In Russia, legislation that represses “LGBT propaganda” was adopted about ten years ago and expanded considerably since then, with Moscow even adding what it describes as “international LGBT movement” in your list of declared entities “terrorists and extremists”although no organization bears this name in the country.
