In an exclusive interview with Euronews in Budapest, Georgia's new Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili questioned whether the protests by pro-EU groups in her country could truly be described as "peaceful".
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00:00The Georgian government has justified a police crackdown on pro-European protesters with
00:06the action of violent groups among the demonstrators.
00:11The groups were deliberately targeting the police force, Georgia's new minister Mako
00:16Bochorshvili said.
00:18Speaking to Euronews in an exclusive interview, she questioned the character of the protests.
00:25Mako Bochorshvili has rights to protests but rights to peaceful protests and unfortunately
00:31I have to say that we cannot really call these protests necessarily peaceful because the
00:38violent groups that we are acting with the fireworks and their targets was police forces
00:45and we have around 200 policemen injured and some of them really received very, very serious
00:54injuries.
00:55It is very hard to say that it is peaceful protest but on the other hand if there is
01:02anything when we see that police is exceeding its limits of reaction of course there should
01:10be reaction from relevant bodies and there is very clear statement from prime minister
01:16that this kind of actions should be investigated.
01:19The protests are directed against a recent decision by Tibbsili to put EU accession talks
01:25on hold.
01:27The process was already in limbo after the ruling Georgian Dream party passed a controversial
01:33foreign influence law that EU critics compared to a similar legislation in Russia.
01:40Georgia's foreign minister rejected the notion that her government was tilting towards Moscow.
01:46Georgian Dream is in power for 12 years now and in this period nobody can find anything
01:53that this government has done in favor of Russia.
01:56But today it is very popular to divide world into white and black and if somebody wants
02:04to make easy negative impression about somebody it is easier to claim that somebody is pro-Russian
02:11or pro-Putin and unfortunately that is the case.