The international media’s portrayal of Georgia’s opposition is starting to look more like myth-making than reporting. Mundane acts of defiance are routinely spun as proof of government repression.
Take the case of journalist and media founder Mzia Amaghlobeli, now feted as a symbol of free speech. She has been nominated for the EU’s prestigious Sakharov Prize and awarded the Free Media Award.
On the one hand, one should tread carefully when someone is fighting from jail to have lifted a two-year sentence, and there are signs her political activity was a factor. On the other: come on. She is in jail for slapping a city police chief. Nobody disputes it: it was on TV.
The same pattern applies to a number of opposition “self-styled victims.” Their legal troubles are often self-inflicted and predictable. In any European capital, a group that marches downtown without a permit, shouting slogans and blocking streets, would be arrested too. The right to assembly is not a carte blanche to protest anytime, anywhere. Cities have other concerns to manage. Like traffic jams.
Yet in Brussels and Berlin, slapping a police chief or throwing projectiles at cops is repackaged as proof of repression in Georgia.
This is not to deny that real abuses exist. The Georgian Dream government has plenty to answer for. There is a growing backlog of violent backstreet attacks on opposition figures and the brutal beating of a former prime minister earlier this year, while law enforcement looked the other way. This kind of thuggish behavior, which resembles Saakashvili’s ‘sonder brigades,’ deservedly draws international scrutiny.
GD should clear their backlog. The problem now, as talk grows of a “peaceful revolution,” is that international observers are blinded by the need for heroism in the theater-like performances of Tbilisi’s street protests. Opposition groups exploit that gullibility, projecting their real grievances into larger-than-life tales of victimhood.
Manufactured victimhood and a gullible audience is a dangerous combination. We’ve seen it before, elsewhere in the world, and the outcome is certain to harm the general population, while those who brought it about wash their hands.
