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May 133 min read

In Tbilisi, the amazing evening of May 11

Tbilisi, on the evening of May 11, 2024. Photo Ezz Gaber



“A few thousand” demonstrators according to the AFP, 50,000 according to the Reuters agency, 300,000 according to les humanités estimates. On the evening of May 11, a gigantic crowd completely blocked the center of Tbilisi to oppose the proposed “Russian law” that the government wants to impose. Story in images and videos below. Despite the almost total silence of the French press and the political class, and while France has just signed an economic partnership with the current Georgian government, les humanités reaffirm their support for the Georgian people and their desire to Europe and democracy. While a general strike is looming from Monday, Georgians are invited to hold the night of May 12 to 13 in front of Parliament.


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949 characters, including spaces. This measures the importance given by the AFP to the monster demonstration (unheard of in Georgia) which, on the evening of May 11, 2024, completely blocked the city center of Tbilisi. Of this enormous crowd, the AFP saw nothing or almost nothing: the report, complacently taken up by Libération and Le monde, without correction, spoke of “several thousand demonstrators”. And patati patata, with a sentence that means nothing: “In the crowd, which converged on Europe Square, demonstrators displayed the flags of Georgia and the European Union – Georgia has officially been a candidate for membership since December 2023 – despite this text which its detractors consider similar to Russian legislation used against the opposition. » (in Le Monde ). In journalistic jargon, this is called "pissing copy."


We are here at the limit of disinformation; impression accentuated by the photo (AFP) chosen by Le Monde to illustrate the dispatch: we can indeed see a few thousand demonstrators there, hardly more.


Left: AFP photo published by Le Monde . Right: photo published on the evening of May 11 on the humanities Facebook page .


Only “a few thousand people”, when estimates relate to 300,000 demonstrators, in a country of 3.7 million inhabitants!

Photo Ezz Gaber


France-Georgia: start-ups rather than democracy


And while the Georgian people massively demonstrate their desire for Europe, Emmanuel Macron's France says nothing. Worse: on the website of the French Embassy in Georgia, the French ambassador, Sheraz Gasri, appears all smiles (photo below) with the Georgian Minister of Finance Lasha Khutsishvili (met on May 2, with the contested Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze) and proudly announces the signing of an economic partnership "in the field of innovation and support for start-ups" between France and the current Georgian government! We could not be clearer in the contempt thus addressed by France to Georgian youth and their desire for Europe...

There was at least one precedent, during Emmanuel Macron's first five-year term. In May 2021, during the brutal repression of the "social spring" in Colombia, condemned by the entire international community, and which left around a hundred young demonstrators dead (notably in Cali), France maintained its political and military cooperation with the extreme right-wing government of Ivan Duque...


Tbilisi, on the evening of May 11, 2024. Photos and videos

with the collaboration of Alyssa G., humanities correspondent in Tbilisi











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