The Georgian authorities have built a sophisticated architecture of repression in a short period, - reads an Amnesty International report titled as "Georgia: Anatomy of Repression: 500 Days of Protest, Crackdown and Resilience".

According to the report, Georgia is facing most serious erosion of human rights and civic space as the ruling party resorts to authoritarian practices to preserve its grip on power amid growing public discontent.

The report examines the coordinated system driving this crackdown: disinformation that turns critics into enemies; restrictive laws that criminalize dissent and shrink civic space; policing that makes protest physically dangerous; and courts that perpetuate the cycle of injustice while giving repression the veneer of legality.

“What took many years to develop in other contexts has been assembled in Georgia with striking speed: a coordinated system in which disinformation, restrictive laws, abusive policing and weaponized judicial processes reinforce one another in a quest to entrench power. Smear campaigns turn critics into enemies. Laws turn dissent into an offence. Police abuses make protests physically dangerous. Courts then perpetuate this spiral of injustice by fostering impunity and rubberstamping the government’s repression,” reads the report.

According to the report, since the start of the country’s continuous protest movement more than two years ago, thousands of people have been arbitrarily detained and fined, hundreds subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, and more than 150 imprisoned following unfair and politically motivated proceedings. Yet for more than 500 days, protesters across Georgia have continued to return to the streets, refusing to abandon their demands for rights, dignity and a better future.

The human cost has been severe. Thousands have experienced arrest, hundreds of people have been beaten in the streets, humiliated in detention and subjected to torture or other ill-treatment. More than 150 people have been imprisoned following politically motivated and unfair proceedings, with little prospect of finding justice. Many people who joined peaceful protests have been subjected to arbitrary detentions and financial ruin through excessive fines simply for standing on the road or even in the pavement, for wearing a mask, criticizing an official, or refusing to leave public space. Others have been silenced or forced to live under constant fear of arrest, prosecution or retaliation. Civic space has been severely restricted. Human rights defenders and civil society organizations that protecting the victims of abuse have themselves become targets. They have been threatened, attacked, investigated, had their accounts frozen, offices closed and staff reduced. Independent journalists have been physically targeted, harassed, prosecuted, cut off from funding and pushed into “survival mode”. Since spring 2024, and especially since the mass daily protests that began on 28 November 2024, the authorities have used the full machinery of the state to deter, punish and extinguish dissent. The information space has been weaponized to brand civil society organizations, independent media, opposition figures and protesters as “foreign agents”, “extremists” or “threats to national security”. These narratives have not remained rhetorical. They have often been followed by harassment, physical attacks, investigations, prosecutions, asset freezes and other punitive measures. Lawmakers have been central to this transformation. Successive legislative amendments, adopted at speed and with no meaningful consultation, have unduly restricted the rights to freedom of association, expression, including media freedom, and peaceful assembly. Measures framed as protecting “transparency”, “sovereignty”, “public order” or “family values” have in practice imposed intrusive state control, introduced sweeping police powers, heavy fines, administrative and criminal liability, suffocating Georgia’s once vibrant civil society.

The police have been given a new legal architecture to increase its coercive force. Law enforcement has repeatedly used unlawful and punitive force against largely peaceful protesters, including beatings and arbitrary arrests. The misuse of less lethal weapons has affected thousands of protestors and injured many more. Hundreds of detained protesters have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. The coordinated nature of these abuses points to a state-sanctioned pattern of punishment. Impunity has been central to this pattern. Despite extensive evidence of police abuse, effective investigations have been rare. Senior officials implicated in violent crackdowns have avoided accountability while the dismantling of already limited oversight mechanisms has further weakened the prospect of justice. The judiciary has reinforced this cycle of injustice against activists and protestors. Georgia’s courts have effectively enforced and legitimized the criminalization of peaceful protest. Thousands have been subjected to severe penalties, including ruinous fines and custodial sanctions, while more than 150 protesters, activists and government critics have been imprisoned after proceedings marked by serious fair trial violations. Increasingly shielding themselves from any meaningful public scrutiny, courts have been turned into tools of rubber-stampers of injustice: punishing dissent, financially exhausting protesters and giving repression the veneer of legality.

As this report shows, this is not a chain of isolated abuses but rather a system of authoritarian practices intended to entrench power, where the formal appearance of the rule of law remains intact but its substance has been hollowed out. The authorities must immediately end their use of authoritarian practices and reverse this course: end the misuse of laws and state institutions against critics, ensure justice for those imprisoned after unfair proceedings, guarantee accountability for torture and other abuses, and provide full reparation to all those harmed”, reads the report.

The report calls on Georgia’s authorities to reverse course immediately and on the international community to recognize and respond to this deliberate system of repression with the urgency it demands.