On March 9th, 2023, a Georgian-language Facebook user posted a video with the following description: “After the Dispersal.” The video shows several injured people lying on the floor. The date of the video creates the impression that it was taken after the dispersal of the protests held in Tbilisi on the evening of March 8th.
The video is being disseminated with a false description. In fact, the footage was not taken after the March 8th protest rally in Tbilisi, but after the February 6th earthquake in Turkey and shows people injured as a result of the natural disaster.
The video can be found on Twitter as early as February 7th, 2023. According to the description, the footage was taken after the February 6th earthquake in Turkey and shows one of the clinics filled with people injured as a result of the natural disaster.
As for the protests held in Tbilisi on March 7th and 8th, the citizens protested the first vote for the bill “On Agents of Foreign Influence” by the parliament. On both evenings, a number of citizens were injured as a result of the dispersal of the protestors by the special forces and the police. The exact number of injured citizens is not known; however, in the photos and videos distributed, it can be seen that the participants, including minors, received various types of injuries.
On March 10th, the director of the Central Criminal Police Department, Teimuraz Kupatadze, announced that 58 policemen were injured during the protests.
On March 7-8th, the police arrested a total of 133 people. They were released from the isolation cells on March 9th.
On March 9th, Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said that “in many instances, the use of force by police was neither proportionate nor necessary and failed to minimize harm and injury.”
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