Christian Daily International, Thursday, June 20, 2024
Believers read the Bible during a service celebrating the Day of the Virgin Mary at the Sioni Cathedral in Tbilisi, Georgia, on August 28, 2011. | REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili
According to a leading law professor, the Georgian government has enacted laws aimed at persecuting churches, non-governmental organizations and independent media.
The Foreign Influence Transparency Act, which took effect on June 3 despite widespread protests, requires churches, NGOs and media outlets that derive more than a fifth of their income from foreign donors to provide personal details in a public register, with fines of thousands of dollars for violations.
Giorgi Meladze, a law professor at Ilia State University, told rights watchdog Forum 18 he was particularly concerned by the impact the law would have on smaller religious communities.
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“We believe this law was specifically crafted as a tool to target the 'other' and religious minorities should see it as a threat to their fundamental rights and freedoms,” Meladze said.
Forum 18 asked Zaza Vashakmadze, head of the state institution for religious affairs, which religious groups would be affected by the law and why the state was demanding such detailed information about funding, but he did not respond.
According to RFE/RL's Georgian service, churches, NGOs and media organisations on the list who fail to comply will be subject to heavy fines of 25,000 lari ($8,945) and will have their details included in the register anyway. The organisations will then be required to file financial declarations or face fines of 10,000 lari ($3,500).
State authorities will inspect the company after a month, and any further failure to comply with the law will result in a fine of an additional 20,000 lari ($7,150). A fine of the same amount will be levied for each month an organization does not provide the required details.
Meladze said the government's “consistent repression” had reduced the presence of religious groups, calling the latest crackdown a “record low.”
“With little attention given to it in the public debate, religious minorities are at risk of losing their rights unnoticed,” he told Forum 18.
According to Meladze, the Georgian government's rush to adopt the new law also hindered the democratic response of relevant organizations.
“The speed with which the government adopted the law left no room for broader public debate or consultation with stakeholders, including religious minority groups,” he told Forum 18. “It could be said that religious minorities were marginalized throughout the process.”
Despite public outcry, on May 28, the Georgian parliament rejected President Salome Zourabichvili's refusal to sign the bill, and parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili signed the bill into law.
The Georgian Dream party, which has controlled the country's parliament since 2012 and is led by businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili, rammed through the law after considering similar regulations in March 2023. Forum 18 reported that Ivanishvili has pledged not to enact similar legislation in the future.
“Promises have been broken, and this is not the first time,” Meladze said.
Legal regulations also require the provision of personal information of employees of organisations, including their religious views.
In a press statement, Forum 18 said many aspects of the law “remain vague” and dangerously open to interpretation by the authorities. Pastor Zaar Tkeshelashvili of the Evangelical Church of Georgia said he feared “the government will install surveillance cameras everywhere to control the religious and private lives of believers.”
Meladze said that to appreciate the underlying threats facing evangelicals and others under the new law, one must understand Georgia's legal culture, which he cited as its characteristics “formalistic application of the law, broad administrative discretion, spontaneous and anonymous precedent-making, and the discriminatory attitude of policy-making bodies.”
According to Meladze, the vagueness of the law created a “toxic combination for the protection of human rights.”
Papuashvili defended the law in response to concerns from Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Michael O'Flaherty, who said the new law was “a necessity, not an option, in order to increase transparency.”
“Overall, the bill complies with European human rights standards,” Papuashvili wrote to O'Flaherty on April 16. He noted that a previous similar bill had been scrapped with the understanding that Georgian and foreign entities would “disclose their funding” and provide the information requested.
“We partner with major donors to [a] “We have been acting voluntarily, but despite our efforts the situation has worsened,” Papuashvili wrote. “The unfortunate reality in Georgia is that certain non-profit organizations continue to circumvent transparency requirements and continue to covertly influence political, economic and security processes.”
Archir Metreveli, a law professor at the University of Georgia and director of the Institute for Religious Freedom, disagrees with Papuashvili on the impact on human rights in the country.
“The process by which this law was proposed and adopted suggests that the government's real goal is not to ensure public financial 'transparency' of private organizations, including religious ones, but to increase control,” Metreveli told Forum 18.
He said the enactment of the law would clearly have a negative impact on human rights in Georgia, including freedom of religion or belief.
“The impacts will be both direct and indirect and will be devastating,” Metreveli told Forum 18.
Forum 18 noted that the new law, known as the Foreign Agents Law, shares similarities with a similar law adopted by Russia in 2012.
Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressed that the law “poses a serious threat to the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association” and urged the Georgian government to repeal it.
The European Commission for Democracy through Law, an advisory body to the Council of Europe known as the Venice Commission, also criticised the new law.
“The law is not only sensitive to human rights issues but also highly controversial in Georgian society, as evidenced by the massive backlash it has received in the country, yet it was adopted through a procedure that blatantly ignores the concerns of a large portion of Georgian citizens and leaves no room for real debate or meaningful consultation,” the committee said, according to Forum 18.
In a May 30 “urgent opinion,” the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) said the law “does not pursue legitimate objectives as reflected in international human rights instruments, fails to demonstrate a specific need, and unduly impacts on rights such as the right to association and the right to privacy.”
This article was originally published by Christian Daily International.
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