The Black Sea

The Georgian Government has announced they are freezing their participation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), after the body voted to accept the Georgian delegation’s credentials on the condition new parliamentary elections be announced.

The vote on Wednesday passed by 114 votes to 13, with seven abstaining. The resolution came in response to widespread electoral violations documented during October’s parliamentary elections in Georgia as well as the violence and prosecutions against protesters, journalists, and civil society figures.

The resolution demanded that by this time, the government must:

• Announce new ‘genuinely democratic’ parliamentary elections;
• Release all political prisoners;
• End police brutality and human rights abuses, and effectively investigate these practices;
• End the misuse of legal proceedings against protesters, journalists, and civil society leaders;
• Revoke the foreign agent law;
• Enable Georgia to resume the European integration process, ‘in line with the European aspirations of the people’.