Police and protesters clashed in Georgia on Wednesday during a month-long opposition campaign to oust President Mikheil Saakashvili, stoking fears of unrest after a failed military mutiny.
Police accused protesters of trying to storm their base, while television pictures showed police and demonstrators trading blows with batons and sticks across a metal gate dividing them.
Police denied opposition accusations they fired rubber bullets as several hundred people converged on the base. Police said 22 protesters and six policemen were wounded. The opposition said several of its leaders were treated in hospital.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“This president has dug his own grave,” opposition leader and former Saakashvili ally Nino Burjanadze told supporters rallying outside parliament after the violence. “We’ll be standing and fighting until the very end.”
Georgia said it put down a brief, bloodless mutiny at a tank base on Tuesday and accused neighboring Russia of plotting a wider rebellion against Saakashvili nine months after a war between the former Soviet neighbors.
NATO began military exercises in Georgia on Wednesday which Russia had condemned as “muscle-flexing” on its southern border.
Georgia has been braced for unrest since the opposition began daily protests on April 9. The protesters have blocked streets in downtown Tbilisi and demanded Saakashvili quit over his record on democracy and last year’s war, when Russia crushed a Georgian assault on breakaway South Ossetia.
Several hundred people had surrounded the police base demanding the release of three opposition activists being held over the beating of a journalist on Tuesday. Masked riot police took position in the grounds.
The West has been watching for a possible repeat of a 2007 police crackdown against the last peaceful mass demonstrations against the 41-year-old president.
Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze told Georgian radio that police had been attacked.
“The police received an order to protect the perimeter,” she said.
At a meeting of the 28 NATO states and their Georgian counterpart in Brussels on Wednesday, NATO called for dialogue between Georgia’s government and the opposition, for reforms to ensure freedom of media and assembly, and for the government to avoid violence against protests, a NATO spokeswoman said.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS