What the Finnish Minister and OSCE Chairperson is doing is a violation of Georgian legislation and also violates Article 41 of the Vienna Convention, wrote Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, on the social platform X.
“Just so you know: the street where the OSCE Chairperson (who is also Finland’s Foreign Minister) is standing is the capital’s main avenue. You see a scene with a few dozen radicals who, a few days ago, stormed the President’s Palace and injured 25 police officers, two of them seriously. They are blocking the road in violation of the law. Georgian legislation, like that of any OSCE member state, guarantees the right to assembly everywhere, and road blockages are only acceptable when it is impossible to accommodate a large number of people on the sidewalk. The Finnish Minister may not know this, but she cannot name a single instance in the last 13 years when the Georgian state has violated this right. You also see, behind the Minister, the square in front of the Parliament building, where ten times more people than those few dozen, including the Finnish Minister herself, could easily be accommodated for a peaceful assembly without blocking traffic. What the Finnish Minister and OSCE Chairperson is doing is a violation of Georgian legislation. It also violates Article 41 of the Vienna Convention, adopted in the same city where the OSCE headquarters is located,” Papuashvili wrote.
According to him, the Finnish Foreign Minister is showing the Georgian people that she supports the organizers of a violent coup.
“What she is demonstrating to the Georgian people is that she supports the organizers of a violent coup and that the rules-based international order is an empty phrase. It also seems that the Finnish authorities are far less lenient toward road-blocking protesters in Helsinki than in Tbilisi,” Papuashvili wrote.
