Fistfights broke out among Georgian lawmakers Monday as a parliamentary committee debated a bill on “foreign agents” which critics say is modelled on draconian legislation in neighboring Russia.
MORE: Video from inside the parliament building in the capital Tbilisi showed a brief but violent brawl between lawmakers after the chairman of the chamber’s legal affairs committee appeared to strike the leader of the United National Movement opposition party, which opposes the bill.
The governing Georgian Dream bloc last month announced that it supported the legislation, which still needs to pass other approval stages before it can become law.
The law would require organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as “foreign agents” and submit to monitoring by the justice ministry, or else face hefty fines.
Critics have compared it to a 2012 Russian law, which has been steadily expanded since then and used to crack down on Russian civil society and independent media. They have cast the law as symbolic of an authoritarian shift in Georgia.
(Reuters)
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