Georgia police raid opposition party HQ and arrest leader

Police in Georgia have stormed the headquarters of the country’s main opposition party and detained its leader, escalating a political crisis and drawing strong condemnation from western allies.

Dozens of special police officers raided the headquarters of the United National Movement in Tbilisi on Tuesday, pushing past makeshift barricades of furniture and using pepper spray against party supporters to arrest Nika Melia, the party’s chairman.

The arrest and wider political crisis has damaged Georgia’s reputation as a democratic trailblazer among post-Soviet states dominated by autocrats and political corruption. The EU and Nato have both sought strong ties with Tbilisi, seeing it as an important ally in the Black Sea region.

The US said the raid meant Georgia had “moved backwards on its path of becoming a stronger democracy”, while Nato’s regional representative said the arrest was “of deep concern”.

Opposition supporters responded by holding a rally outside the country’s main parliament that blocked one of the capital’s main roads, and called for mass protests on Friday to demand new elections.

Melia’s detention on charges of unpaid bail was ordered by a Tbilisi court last week, a ruling that prompted the resignation of the country’s prime minister who warned the decision risked deepening political divisions.

Separately, the UNM has refused to acknowledge the results of October’s parliamentary election after accusing the ruling Georgian Dream party of voting irregularities and suppressing the opposition.

Video footage of Tuesday’s raid posted on social networks showed riot police wrestling with UNM supporters and dragging Melia through the building. Twenty-one people were arrested, police said afterwards.

The US embassy in Tbilisi said it was “deeply concerned by the government’s decision to detain the head of a major opposition political party.”

“We regret that the call of the United States and other international partners for restraint and dialogue was ignored. We are dismayed by the polarising rhetoric from Georgia’s leadership at a time of crisis. Force and aggression are not the solution to resolving Georgia’s political differences. Today, Georgia has moved backward on its path toward becoming a stronger democracy in the Euro-Atlantic family of nations,” it added.

The ruling government has said police were fulfilling a legal court order and has rejected demands for fresh elections.

“Before Melia’s arrest, police officers repeatedly warned the people in his party’s office not to resist the execution of the court’s decision,” Georgia’s interior ministry said. “These warnings were not followed, and so the police had to use proportional force and special means.”

Charges against Melia stem from his participation in a 2019 protest in opposition to Georgian Dream’s decision to invite a Russian MP to chair a session of parliament. Russian influence is a sensitive topic in the country, which lost roughly a fifth of its territory in a 2008 war with Moscow-backed separatists.

Georgian Dream, which took power from UNM in 2012 and has ruled the country ever since, was founded by billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia.