“Unacceptable elsewhere, funded here”: Georgian Parliament Speaker blasts hate campaign

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Thursday said that while Molotov cocktails and hate speech were deemed unacceptable in other countries, such actions were being funded and supported in Georgia.

In his remarks, Papuashvili emphasised the importance of ending what he described as the “imported language of hate”.

“That’s why I wrote letters to the EU Ambassador, and why we have long publicly called on [foreign] ambassadors and donors to stop the hate campaign that is financed from abroad. They did not act, and this is the reason for these complaints”, the Speaker said.

He further claimed that the activists against whom legal cases had been launched were “emotionally damaged individuals” being used by external actors to spread hate in Georgia.

Papuashvili added that addressing hate speech was a standard practice in all democratic countries.

“Today, experiences from various countries were made public. Just recently, in Germany, a person was fined the equivalent of 20,000 GEL for calling the Foreign Minister the “dumbest Minister” on platform X. So, this is how it works everywhere. The challenge is hate speech. The problem is that while Molotov cocktails are unacceptable elsewhere, here they are funded. While hate is rejected elsewhere, here it is supported. Therefore, it is crucial to understand that the language of hate imported from abroad must be stopped”, Papuashvili noted.

He further pointed out that the real respondents in these cases were the donors and ambassadors who, in his words, “encourage, support, and fund this hate campaign and refuse to distance themselves from it”.