TBILISI, Oct 19 (Reuters) – A court in Georgia sentenced a well-known TV anchor to 30 days in jail on Monday after he posted comments online critical of ruling party politicians, part of a string of prosecutions of “hate speech” that have triggered concern about press freedom.
The ruling, reported by the Interpress news agency, marks the second detention and third penalty for Vakho Sanaia, a journalist with the opposition channel Formula.
In power since 2012, the governing Georgian Dream party has clamped down on opposition figures and groups since winning re-election in an October 2024 parliamentary vote.
A subsequent move by the government to freeze its accession process for the European Union triggered massive street demonstrations in the South Caucasus country by Georgians angered by what they cast as the country’s authoritarian turn.
The Constitutional Court will hear a lawsuit next week filed by Georgian Dream that seeks to ban the country’s largest opposition parties outright.
Monday’s court decision and the previous cases against Sanaia stem from online posts he wrote criticising Georgia’s parliamentary speaker and another ruling party politician.
The comments, cited by Georgian media, contain vulgarities directed at the politicians, for which Sanaia served a 14-day jail sentence in July.
“The main goal of my arrest is to silence society,” he was cited as saying by Interpress after the ruling on Monday. “We will overthrow this regime, no matter how long it takes.”
This summer the government established a body within the interior ministry to monitor public statements that “violate/insult human dignity and contain hate speech”.
Dozens of people have been arrested and fined since then for holding placards at rallies or writing comments online that criticise politicians and other public figures, including Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire former prime minister widely viewed as Georgia’s de facto ruler.
Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have condemned the prosecutions, saying they threaten the right to freedom of expression.
(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou;Editing by Alison Williams)
