As a result, he said, Washington would impose travel restrictions on “accomplices in undermining Georgia's democracy” and their families, as well as those “responsible for suppressing civil society and freedom of peaceful assembly in Georgia through a campaign of violence and intimidation.”
The United States “expects Georgia's leaders to reconsider the bill and take steps to advance their country's democracy and Euro-Atlantic vision,” Blinken said, adding that future actions would determine the U.S.' next move.
The foreign agents bill, which applies to organisations that get more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad, is due to be passed into law in a final vote in parliament on Wednesday. The Council of Europe's top legal body has warned that the sweeping measures could be misused to silence groups critical of the state and are reminiscent of similar rules used by Vladimir Putin's Russia to block private organisations. The EU says it will undermine Georgia's membership prospects just six months after it was granted candidate status.
The EU said this would undermine Georgia's accession prospects just six months after the country was granted candidate status. (Photo: Giorgi ARJEVANIDZE / AFP) (Photo: GIORGI ARJEVANIDZE/AFP via Getty Images)
Unlike the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), simply receiving income from overseas is enough to be branded an organization as “serving the interests of a foreign power,” regardless of whether that income is true or not. New proposals to ban “LGBT propaganda,” combined with Georgian Dream's increasingly anti-Western rhetoric, have raised concerns that the country is going backwards on human rights.
The ruling party claims the law is necessary to protect against foreign influence, while accusing Western-backed NGOs of plotting a coup against the elected government. Tens of thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, to protest the move, while riot police have tried to disperse them with tear gas and water cannons, and have violently arrested activists and opposition politicians.
The State Department's decision mirrors demands proposed in draft bills recently introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. As first reported by POLITICO, the two sets of bills call for imposing sanctions on Georgian Dream and offering incentives if the government were to withdraw its foreign agents bill.
Georgian Dream said in a statement that such efforts amounted to “blackmail” and called on the EU to open accession negotiations with Georgia, as it has done with Ukraine and Moldova.
In an unusual move, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Thursday accused the EU of blackmailing him over the fate of Slovakian leader Robert Fico, who was shot dead earlier this month. Kobakhidze claimed Fico was the target of an intelligence plot. EU Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi later issued a statement saying the prime minister had been quoted “out of context.” Kobakhidze offered no evidence to support his claims, and Georgia's opposition slammed them as “dubious conspiracy theories.”
