Events that characterize the “Family Purity Day” in Georgia

Tiflisi – Top officials of the ruling Georgian Dream Party joined older orthodox spiritual and conservative religious groups in an in Rallies across the country On May 17th, he marked a new holiday, which is known as a Family Purity Day, including a march in Central -Tiflis, the scene of weeks of protests against a late “foreign agent” place, which was adopted by Parliament at the beginning of this week.

In 2014, the Family Purity Day was founded by the conservative Orthodox Church of Georgia in response to the international day against homophobia, biphobia and transthobia (Idahobit), which is characterized every year on May 17, to raise awareness of violations of LGBT rights around the world.

In order to avoid confrontation, no rallies against the “foreign agent” setting were planned during the march for the Family Purity Day.

The event, which is marked for the first time with an official vacation, is supported by the ruling Georgian dream party, which in March initiated a legislative template that was reintroduced in March just a few weeks before it was reintroduced in parliament, the bill of “foreign agent”, which was modeled as modeled by a similar draconian law.

The anti-LGBT-Georgian Dream Bill prohibits transgender surgery, the adoption of children through same-sex couples who indicate gender that are different in official documents than male and female, and the organization of public events that spread same-sex relationships.

Both laws are regarded as attempts by the Georgian dream, which was founded by Russia-friendly billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in order to advertise his conservative guidelines before the elections planned for October.

In Tbilisi, the celebrations in the Kashveti cathedral began with a mass that was served by Shio Mujiri, the patriarchal locum Tenens.

A procession, at thousands in the cathedral of the Holy Trinity of Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, Mayor Kakha Kaladze, also Georgian dream secretary of Georgh, began, and the parliamentary spokeswoman Shalva Papuashvili, which a congratulations on social media in May in May in May published.

The official attention that was given to the event seems to be an attempt to immerse the effects of weeks of massive protests against the controversial “foreign agent” law, which was approved by Parliament at the beginning of this week, when the police acted violently on demonstrators.

Ana Subeliani, co-director of Tbilisi Pride, said RFE/RL in an interview that the LGBT topic is used as a manipulation tool to create anti-western emotions among the population.

The government's policy is to create “the narrative that the West -our partners, our friends, from the western countries – -that they pack our values ​​and that LGBT people are the main enemies,” she said.

She also said that the LGBT community will no longer organize events on May 17 because it does not want to give them an additional reason to attack the queer community members.

“Unfortunately, this day becomes a day full of violence and hatred … in our country,” she added.

It was a “super traumatic experience” for the LGBT community that events at the Family Purity Day Idahobit have replaced events, she said. It is already normalized that the LGBT community “should do nothing on May 17th. … If we do it, it is associated with a great risk.”

The pro-Western President Salome Zurabishvili, who contradicted Georgian dream, described the “foreign agent” setting as “unacceptable” and “not consistently” with the country's path for integration into euro-atlantic institutions.

However, the parliamentary majority of Georgian Dream will enable him to easily override the President's veto.

The law was condemned by the United States, the European Union and the rights to the rights that referred to their similarity to the laws used by President Vladimir Putin in order to crush Dissens in Russia and suppress independent institutions, and the Georgians to describe the measure as “the Russian law”.

Zurabishvili has warned that the survival of Georgia as a state due to legislation, in which media, NGOs and other non -profit organizations are necessary, are in danger of pursuing the interests of foreign power “if more than 20 percent of their financing comes from abroad.

“It is unacceptable because it reflects a turn of the Georgian attitude towards civil society, the media and the recommendations of the European Commission that do not correspond to our declared politics for European integration,” Zurabishvili told the Associated Press in an interview on May 16.

On May 15, demonstrators marched together with the outside ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland in a gesture of solidarity with the western efforts of the Georgians.

An RFE/RL source in Brussels said that the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, said talks with Zurabishvilil and Kobakhidze, where he emphasized that the Georgian people had to determine their own future. Michel said Kobakhidze to look for a way out of political turbulence, the source said.

Kobakhidze has accused the demonstrator of “following the agenda of the political minority” and accused that they would show “great irresponsibility” towards their country.

The Georgian dream-controlled security forces have repeatedly broken violently against protesters with water cannons, tear gas and rubber balls.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis expressed Concern about the violence used to act against demonstrators.

“It is really worried about what we see on the street when it comes to intimidation and brutality,” he said in an interview with RFE/RL in Tbilisi. “That has to stop.”

The presence of the western Foreign Minister in the anti-own agent law protests, which the government did not prevent, triggered irritation among Georgian dream leaders.

“This is a very big insult,” said Kaladze, the mayor and head of the Georgian Dream Party, the media after taking part in the religious march in Tbilis on May 17th.

“All industrialized countries would have brought these foreign ministers by the hand and thrown them out of the country,” Kaladze said.