Protesters treated in hospital after clashes in Georgia capital

More than 200 people were injured in a night of clashes in the Georgian capital, and half of them are still in the hospital, a top health official said on Friday.

Zaza Bokhua’s statement came soon after the nation’s president, Salome Zurabishvili, said that she was cutting short her trip to Belarus to return to the capital Tbilisi to deal with the crisis sparked by the appearance of a Russian politician inside the Georgian parliament.

Two hundred and forty people were injured after riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas and unleashed water cannons on protesters outside Georgia’s parliament building.

Giorgi Kordzakhiya, director of Tbilisi’s New Hospital, said two people lost eyes because of the rubber bullets.

The unrest was sparked by the scheduled appearance of Russian lawmaker Sergei Gavrilov, a Communist Party member, at parliament as part of an assembly of legislators from Orthodox Christian countries.

The visit of the Russian delegation of the Orthodox assembly had prompted complaints before, but the anger turned into a street protest after Mr Gavrilov sat in the chair of the Georgian parliament speaker during a session of the assembly.

The country’s prime minister Mamuka Bakhtadze on Friday blamed opposition leaders for the violence.

Mr Bakhtadze called the public outpouring “genuine” but said that the protest was hijacked by “the leaders of the destructive opposition who violated the law and the Constitution”.

Georgia and Russia fought a brief war in 2008 at the end of which Russia recognised the independence of Georgia’s two breakaway republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and still continues to fund and arm the separatist governments there.

The two countries broke off diplomatic relations after the war but steps have been made in recent years to restore ties, including Georgia scrapping visitor visas for Russians and Russia lifting a ban on Georgian wine imports.

But animosity toward Russia is still strong due to the Kremlin’s support of the two separatist governments.

Mr Gavrilov on Friday blamed the clashes on “radical groups” who were trying to stage a “coup”.

Speaking on state Rossiya 24 TV channel, Mr Gavrilov rejected reports that he was fighting on the side of the separatists in Georgia’s Abkhazia, insisting that he had only been there on “humanitarian missions”.