The ruling majority plans to tighten the criminal law for insulting religious buildings and things.

In this regard, the chairman of the legal affairs committee, Anri Okhanashvili, made a special statement in the parliament, according to which the draft law will be initiated in the near future.

According to Okhanashvili, the toughened law will affect both Christian-Orthodox and other religious buildings.

"We would like to respond to the fact that happened yesterday in Tbilisi's Holy Trinity Cathedral, which caused fair protest and excitement in the vast majority of our society.

For us, in a place of sacred importance for our society - in the church, such non-Christian behavior and in general, offensive action for any religion, which creates a serious and real basis for inciting a quarrel on religious grounds, is totally unacceptable.

It is worth noting that this anti-church and provocative action was publicly approved and supported by the leaders of radical political groups fighting against the church, which renews the commission of various serious actions on religious grounds.

In addition to this, there have been individuals who call themselves Orthodox clergymen and publicly come out with a call to "pull out the relevant icon from the Trinity Cathedral and burn it publicly."

Such violent appeals on religious grounds are certainly unchristian and offensive to our Church, as well as being seriously provocative.

It should be emphasized that such behavior and calls are offensive and justifiably offensive to any religion and its representatives!

Therefore, it is our positive obligation to ensure the proper protection of the freedom of belief and religion guaranteed by the Constitution of Georgia, so as not to allow any religion to be insulted!

It is true that the fact that happened in Sameba, according to the current Georgian legislation, is against the law and provides for appropriate responsibility, although the current legislation does not provide for proportional responsibility for such actions.

Therefore, we have already started an in-depth study of the mentioned issue. We will study the international and especially the experience of the EU member states, the approaches of the Strasbourg Court, we will have consultations and we will initiate relevant legislative changes in the near future.

In addition, based on initial research, we already know that in many EU member states, insulting religious buildings and other similar actions are punishable by criminal law and include imprisonment (for example, Germany, Austria, Poland, Greece, Italy, etc.).

Therefore, our team will initiate legislative changes in the near future to tighten criminal responsibility for insulting religious buildings and things! This applies to both Christian-Orthodox and other religious buildings (for example, mosque, synagogue, Catholic or other churches).

As a result, our goal is not to allow the religious temples to be insulted and to prevent the instigation of quarrels on religious grounds in the society", Okhanashvili said.