Some of the detainees, according to a statement published by the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), are now in medical facilities struggling to speak or move, with injuries such as concussion, broken facial bones and hematomas.
Georgia has seen five successive nights of political unrest after Irakli Kobakhidze, the prime minister, said the government was halting European Union membership talks until 2028.
The announcement sparked widespread anger in the country, with people feeling that the postponement will drag Georgia away from EU accession and place it in the Russian sphere of influence.
The authorities have used water cannons and tear gas to break up the demonstrations, and there have been allegations of police brutality.
“According to lawyers from the Legal Aid Network, most of the individuals detained on December 2, 2024, have been brutally beaten,” the GYLA, which, according to its own website, is one of Georgia’s “largest and most trusted human rights organizations,” said in its statement.
“According to the detainees, they were subjected to violence by law enforcement officers both during and after their arrest,” it continued. “In the police vans, they were mercilessly beaten by at least six special forces officers who took turns assaulting them. The officers coordinated with one another, even discussing whether to break the detainees’ arms or legs.”
Inside the vans, the statement said, officers took turns beating and verbally abusing the political protesters, leaving the interiors “covered in blood.”
The protestors were then forced to return to police patrol cars by walking, often barefooted, through a special corridor of officers who continued to beat them.
Giving one particularly striking detail, the report says that “an older man, appearing to oversee the torture, ensured that the detainees weren’t fatally injured.”
Salome Zourabichvili, Georgia’s pro-European president, told TVP World on Monday that the protests are a “civil rebellion movement.”
Zourabichvili earlier on Tuesday received an asylum offer from Lithuania, one of many Western countries that have refused to recognize the results of October’s general elections, which handed the Georgian Dream party another term in office.
