“We will not obey the Russian law,” reads the joint statement of the Georgian Non-Governmental Organizations, which declared disobedience to the law On Transparency of Foreign Influence.

“Fifty-five days ago, the government broke its word to the Georgian people and re-initiated the “Russian law”. By that, it aimed at cleavaging the civil sector, but encountered an unprecedented unity and unflagging confrontation. The Georgian people are strong and will be in defending our own European future and will never ever get along with living under the boot of Russia. The “Russian law” will not work in our country! It will remain to be an unrecognized document to which none of us will obey!

The government has consciously endangered economy of our country, international reputation, civil order and peace. They did this deliberately so that the citizens of this country would not be able to help each other.  But we keep strong and have been proving for almost 55 days that people do not exhaust in loving their country. We’ll continue our protest and confrontation until this law is repealed!

They tried to scare us with special operations forces, beatings and insults, detentions and illicit fines, but they couldn’t predict that all their measures aimed at stopping us in the legitimate cause of helping people would be in vain. We’ll go on with our deed – we’ll help people and each other and won’t obey the “Russian law”!

We won’t leave a single person without help, we’ll protect all those detained and those brought to administrative responsibility. Our lawyers will defend their rights both within the country and in international courts. We’ll accumulate funds to pay fines of each other that were imposed on us because of our devotion to our country and the fight for freedom.

The entire civilized world sees our struggle and supports us in this. The adoption of the “Russian law” will put at risk observation of elections, but in spite of this, we, Georgian CSOs, promise you to protect the elections and every single vote of our citizens. We will be with you at every polling station and will observe to protect free and fair elections! This is Georgia! We won’t become Russified! The Georgian people will once again and not only once astonish the whole world with their struggle for freedom.

We declare disobedience – no to the “Russian law”! Yes – to Europe!,” reads the statement.