Is the West being hypocritical about Georgia’s foreign agents law?

The Georgian parliament has rammed through its new foreign agents law amid massive protests, overriding the veto of pro-western and pro-EU president Salome Zourabichvili. The new law essentially will require all non-commercial organisations operating in Georgia to register as foreign agents and publicise themselves as such if they receive over 20 per cent of their funding from abroad. Its aim is to counter the influence of pro-western NGOs in the country.

The proposal has already caused serious unrest, and this will undoubtedly now balloon. You can see why. The government led by ruling party Georgian Dream is not a pleasant grouping. It is far from libertarian and apt to suppressing dissent with some force. Also, even if not officially pro-Kremlin, it is certainly in favour of appeasing Moscow over Ukraine. Georgian Dream’s chairman and founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, an apparently paranoid billionaire with many Russian connections, alleges that there is a shadowy ‘global war party’ conspiring to force Georgia into war with Russia through influencing NGOs and other organisations within the country, and that something needs to be done.