DISINFO: The West finds unacceptable that Georgians want to make Georgian laws
SUMMARY
Georgia’s ‘sovereignty’ is surveilled from the West. In February, two bills were presented in the Parliament about the interference of foreign governments. One was the “Georgian legal initiative” and the other the “US law”, because it was basically the Foreign US Foreign Agent Registration Act of the US translated in Georgian. Most legislators found it paradoxical to approve a law on foreign interference by making cut and paste of a foreign law, so the “Georgian law” was approved by a wide majority in the Parliament.
Immediately opponents took to the streets, while Washington and Brussels threatened Georgian authorities with sanctions and serious obstructions to Georgia’s entrance in the EU. And since most people don’t read any bill, mainstream media found the fashionable way for the collective West to perceive this legal initiative as the personification of evil, starting to call it as “Russian law” instead of Georgian.
Some months ago, the Georgian government refused to deliver weapons to Ukraine and insisted that they won’t get their country involved in an armed conflict with Russia. Washington is twisting the arms of small countries.
RESPONSE
This disinformation story distorts some key elements of the March 2023 protests in Georgia. The controversial ‘foreign agents law’ was not nicknamed “Russian law” by some international media in order to demonize it, but because it mirrored a 2012 law in Russia used to crack down on dissent and suppress western-funded NGOs and media, and which could be used to restrict freedom of expression and association. For these reasons, it found strong rejection among Georgian citizens, which led to massive protests and ultimately to its withdrawal by the Georgian government.
This disinformation story also falsely implies that these mobilisations were orchestrated by Western powers, which is not based in any evidence. Framing all popular protests against Russia’s interests as a foreign-led ‘colour revolution’ is a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that the West arranges puppet governments through colour revolutions, that Kyiv regime came to power as a result of illegal coup organized by the West, that after Ukraine, western scriptwriters tried to organize coups d’etat in Belarus and Kazakhstan, or that colour revolutions provoked by the US and NATO created migration crisis