Police Restrict Armenian Genocide Remembrance Event Near Turkish Embassy Under Newer Rally Laws – Civil Georgia

A local Armenian community group said on April 24 that the Georgian Interior Ministry has denied them holding an Armenian Genocide remembrance event near the Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi in a break of tradition and under stricter rally laws that require advance police notice and allow the ministry to request changing time, location, and route of a demonstration.

Armenian Community of Georgia, a non-governmental organization, said in a statement that the community has been holding a peaceful event on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, marked on April 24 to commemorate the victims of a mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century, for twenty years near the Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi.

According to the group, in 2026, too, they applied to Tbilisi City Hall in advance, “in full compliance with Georgian law and terms,” but received a call from a representative of the Georgian patrol police notifying a rejection to hold an event at the traditional place, citing the need “to avoid potential risks.”

The group said it took them days to trace the original letter in public agencies.

The Interior Ministry’s letter, when finally obtained, reportedly cited the provisions of recently tightened protest laws which allow police to request a change in time, location, or the form of an assembly. The laws, adopted in December, cite a need to strike a “balance” between freedom of assembly and rights of those living, working, or pursuing entrepreneurial activities in the areas of a planned rally, as well as public safety and order and uninterrupted movement of transport and people, and “other human rights and freedoms.”

“Since there is a probability of violation of the requirements of the above-mentioned norm by holding the assembly at the site you indicated, given its placement and location, we ask you to consider the advisability of changing the location of the assembly,” the group quoted the Ministry’s letter.

The community group said such decisions are taken “in a non-transparent form” and the parties are notified “with significant delay.”

“This practice does not comply with the rule of law standards and undermines the trust in state institutions,” the group said, adding that they “do not find it possible to change the location of the event and won’t be holding the event that has turned into a tradition at any other address but the territory near the Turkish Embassy.”

From Notification to De Facto Permit Regime?

The ruling Georgian Dream party introduced in December stricter police notice rules as part of yet another package restricting the freedom of assembly, in an apparent attempt to crack down on daily anti-government rallies on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue. Over the past months, however, other groups, too, reported restrictions on holding rallies at desired places, including miners from Chiatura who had arrived to hold protests in Tbilisi.

Under the new rules, organizers of rallies to be held “in areas of movement of people or transport” are required to notify the Ministry of Internal Affairs no less than five days in advance for non-spontaneous rallies and “immediately within a reasonable time” for spontaneous rallies.

The ministry will have three days to review the request and propose an alternative location, time, or route if the planned gathering “poses a real threat to public safety, public order, the normal functioning of enterprises, institutions, and organizations, the unimpeded movement of vehicles and people, or to human rights and freedoms.”

Those who fail to comply with the ministry’s orders will be treated as offenders and face detention of up to 15 days for participants and up to 20 days for organizers. Critics, including Georgia’s Public Defender, have warned that such provisions risk effectively introducing a de facto permit regime that contradicts the Georgian Constitution.

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