A revolution needs a victim, a defeated revolution, even more so. And those who were the easiest to instigate and exploit ended up precisely in this role of the victim. Speaker of the Georgian Parliament writes on his Facebook page.

"Due to crimes related to the violent protests of 2024/2025, criminal prosecution was initiated against approximately 100 individuals, excluding the organizers of the violence.

Today, 45 of them are free - based on admission of guilt, plea bargains were concluded with some, while others were pardoned by the President. 72 individuals remain in custody.

This situation raises one main question: if the government`s goal is to lock these people in prison, as those speaking on their behalf claim, then why are 45 people free today?

The answer is simple: for the state, these people have never been political enemies.

They were a blind weapon in the hands of those irresponsible people who first convinced them that breaking the law in the name of revolution was an act of heroism, then sent them to the barricades, and when the revolution failed and the time for accountability came, calmly stayed behind the barricades themselves.

A revolution needs a victim. A defeated revolution, even more so. And those who were the easiest to instigate and exploit ended up precisely in this role of the victim.

Therefore, today the main question is no longer why these 72 people are in prison. The main question is: who needs them to stay there?

The Government?

Then why were 45 people released based on plea bargains and presidential pardons?

Why does a legal path to freedom exist for those who acknowledge their responsibility and admit to the crime committed?

Or is their remaining in custody, in reality, needed precisely by those who drove them toward the barricades, and then sculpted them into "tvalkhatulebi" [the beautiful-eyed ones], "boys of smiles", "suns", and other symbols of political struggle?

Our attitude was no different back then and has not changed today: these people are victims of manipulation. First, they were used as barricade soldiers, and now they are being used as prisoner-victims.

The state’s approach is simple: realize what you participated in; take responsibility for your actions; admit that you broke the law and confirm that you will not repeat it.

This is not a demand to renounce your political views. This is taking legal responsibility for a specific action. There is no humiliation in this, no gloating, and no demonstration of moral superiority over anyone. This is a simultaneous standard of the rule of law and a humane state.

However, the moral terror being inflicted upon them today by people who themselves sit freely in the cafes of Brussels or Tbilisi and dictate to others that they "must sit [in prison] until the end" is an entirely different matter.

Why?

Because they need a victim. They need a person in prison to maintain the illusion of their own struggle outside. They need "tvalkhatulebi" and "stars" on posters to feed their own political ego and maintain the face of a victim for a defeated revolution. Therefore, their shout – "Freedom to prisoners!" - in reality, increasingly acquires the exact opposite meaning:

Do not take responsibility!
Do not dare to leave prison!
Sit until the end!
We do not need your freedom, we need your imprisonment!

However, this path has long been a dead end. The verdicts have been rendered, the crimes admitted, and there is no longer a person of sound mind inside the country or abroad who would say that the protest was not violent.

Along with the revolution, the revolutionary propaganda has also been defeated.

That is precisely why the situation of these 72 individuals is particularly heavy today. They are serving sentences not only for their own crime. They also remain captives of the dishonesty of the people who first pushed them toward breaking the law, then abandoned them, and now declare even their release a moral crime. Therefore, one name suits them most accurately: "prisoners of dishonesty"", - writes Shalva Papuashvili.