Speaker of the Georgian Parliament said that countries which encourage, support or turn a blind eye to political violence abroad may eventually face similar violence at home.

Speaking about recent developments in France, he argued that some European countries, including France, had either remained silent about or supported violent actions during protests in Georgia.

“When you encourage, support or turn a blind eye to violence in another country, you create a precedent that political violence is acceptable and that violence, in general, can be used as a tool of political struggle. And if you establish such a precedent, the result is that, ultimately, you will experience it in your own country.

Demonstrators [in Tbilisi] had attempted to set fire to the Parliament building, storm the Presidential Palace and attack police officers.

One police officer lost his eyesight, several dozen police officers had to be hospitalised, and yet we received either silence regarding the violence or support for the perpetrators from various European countries, including France and the French President.

Such responses had contributed to normalising political violence as a legitimate means of political struggle.

We said at the time that those who remain silent about violence or support perpetrators will ultimately experience violence in their own country. This is exactly what is happening, because when you encourage, support or turn a blind eye to violence in another country, you create a precedent that political violence is acceptable and that violence, in general, can be used as a tool of political struggle.

Today, we see that the streets of Paris have effectively been turned into a scene of some kind of armed conflict. We see brutal behaviour by protesters toward the police. We see violent participants in the protests, but we also see peaceful participants, and we see the police using violence against peaceful participants.

French police had used batons against peaceful demonstrators, including women… Let me remind you that batons are not used by the police in Georgia at all. They are directly beating peaceful demonstrators with batons and dragging them along the ground, including women”, - said Shalva Papuashvili.

As he added, he expected the results of investigations into alleged police violence in France to be made public: “We hope that the findings of subsequent investigations into police violence will be published. Five thousand people have been arrested, and the violence was visible live on television. Therefore, it will be interesting to hear, perhaps from the French ambassador at some point, what the results are - how many police officers were punished for this violence and what penalties were imposed for the actions that we witnessed live”.