In this country, swearing at the government has always been a normal thing; even if it’s a good government, you can still swear at it. They will never kill this; this country will not become Turkmenistan, Ashgabat will not be Tbilisi - it’s ruled out, - this was stated by Zurab Girchi Japaridze.

He came to the Tbilisi City Court to attend the court hearing of activists detained under administrative procedure near the Tbilisi City Assembly.

“I have said it many times and I can repeat the same: freedom of speech and expression is the last instrument we have in our hands, and they cannot kill this - it’s impossible. When I say that Georgia will not become Russia, this is what I mean. In this country, swearing at the government has always been a normal thing; even if it’s a good government, you can still swear at it. They will never kill this; this country will not become Turkmenistan, Ashgabat will not be Tbilisi - it’s ruled out. They will arrest someone because of a banner, and they will bring out a different banner; a million banners have already appeared. It’s impossible; they cannot take this away from Georgians. If we had a normal court, it would discuss this. There was a survey on the banner, right? How was it? - ‘Bidzina is a c... yes/no’ - this was a survey. In Georgia, we express attitudes toward different people with different words. ‘Bad’ and ‘good’ are very general; about someone you say ‘c...’, ‘wh...’, ‘f...’, ‘asshole’ - each has its own meaning. If you want to ask a person what attitude they have toward Bidzina, one will say one thing, another will say something else, a third will say something else. Maybe a person was interested in how many people agreed with that assessment. Apparently, many agree, otherwise they wouldn’t have arrested them,” - Japaridze stated.

In response to a journalist’s question, he also spoke about the possibility of sorting out Georgian-American relations.

“In what does sorting out express itself? First of all, they have been sorting things out for so long - and what have they not been able to sort out? Since November 2024 they have been sorting things out, sometimes waiting for the inauguration, sometimes for this, sometimes for that. The American Constitution has the First Amendment; this First Amendment is about freedom of expression. This amendment says that the main legislative body of America, Congress, does not have the right to adopt any law that would restrict the freedom of expression of an American citizen - that is how important freedom of expression is for America. Europe has slightly different standards; they restrict some things. These people are now appealing to Europe - ‘we are doing it the way it is in Europe’ - but the position of the current American administration is as follows... They will not be able to sort out anything; we have been saying this for several months - it is ruled out that they will sort it out; it doesn’t get sorted out this way; they will not sort things out with the kajis,” - Japaridze stated.