Exclusive: Georgia's foreign minister says pro-EU protests not 'necessarily peaceful'

euronews (in English)

In an exclusive interview with Euronews in Budapest, Georgia's new Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili questioned whether the protests by pro-EU groups in her country could truly be described as "peaceful".

Transcript

00:00The Georgian government has justified a police crackdown on pro-European protesters with

00:06the action of violent groups among the demonstrators.

00:11The groups were deliberately targeting the police force, Georgia's new minister Mako

00:16Bochorshvili said.

00:18Speaking to Euronews in an exclusive interview, she questioned the character of the protests.

00:25Mako Bochorshvili has rights to protests but rights to peaceful protests and unfortunately

00:31I have to say that we cannot really call these protests necessarily peaceful because the

00:38violent groups that we are acting with the fireworks and their targets was police forces

00:45and we have around 200 policemen injured and some of them really received very, very serious

00:54injuries.

00:55It is very hard to say that it is peaceful protest but on the other hand if there is

01:02anything when we see that police is exceeding its limits of reaction of course there should

01:10be reaction from relevant bodies and there is very clear statement from prime minister

01:16that this kind of actions should be investigated.

01:19The protests are directed against a recent decision by Tibbsili to put EU accession talks

01:25on hold.

01:27The process was already in limbo after the ruling Georgian Dream party passed a controversial

01:33foreign influence law that EU critics compared to a similar legislation in Russia.

01:40Georgia's foreign minister rejected the notion that her government was tilting towards Moscow.

01:46Georgian Dream is in power for 12 years now and in this period nobody can find anything

01:53that this government has done in favor of Russia.

01:56But today it is very popular to divide world into white and black and if somebody wants

02:04to make easy negative impression about somebody it is easier to claim that somebody is pro-Russian

02:11or pro-Putin and unfortunately that is the case.

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