Today, on September 2, police detained more than 20 individuals on Rustaveli Avenue under administrative procedures[1]. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the protesters were obstructing vehicular traffic and disobeying police orders. Among those detained are students and civil activists. At this time, the whereabouts of the detainees remain unknown. So far, the Public Defender has not issued a statement regarding the use of force during the detention of the protesters.

Following the announcement of guilty verdicts by the Tbilisi City Court against prisoners of conscience, citizens gathered near the Parliament building to protest the report of a temporary investigative commission with a controversial mandate, studying the activities of the "National Movement". The police officers mobilized at the scene did not allow part of the citizens to express their protest and detained them using force. Publicly available video footage confirms that the demonstrators were placed into police vehicles without any prior explanation. At the moment of detention, part of the detained citizens were not occupying the roadway.

It is noteworthy that the right to assemble in public spaces, including on roadways, is protected under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court considers the use of public space for assemblies just as legitimate as for any other purpose[2]. Therefore, the temporary occupation of a roadway should not be grounds for restricting the freedom of assembly and expression — especially when the location of the protest holds symbolic significance for its participants[3]. It is evident that law enforcement officers blatantly disregarded citizens' freedom of assembly by swift and aggressive dispersal of the gathering.

Moreover, besides the groundlessness of using mass detention of citizens as an extreme measure during a peaceful assembly, the aggressive actions of law enforcement officers and the complete disregard for the procedural guarantees of the detainees are alarming. Video footage shows that the police use force against protest participants unnecessarily and detain them in groups without any prior warning or explanation. The videos also show that those citizens who did not resist law enforcement officers, verbally indicating this, were forcibly taken to police vehicles. The footage further reveals that law enforcement officers were aggressive not only toward the detainees, but also toward bystanders.

Thus, it is clear that after several waves of legislative changes aimed at significantly undermining the guarantees of freedom of assembly and expression, police forces continue to carry out violent detentions of protest participants, and law enforcement agencies act not in the interest of protecting public safety, but rather in the interest of obstructing freedom of assembly.

In light of the above, we call on the Ministry of Internal Affairs to:

• Immediately release the illegally detained activists;
• Cease the unlawful detention of protest participants, respect freedom of assembly and expression of citizens gathered near the Parliament, and allow them to protest peacefully.   

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