Shalva Papuashvili: Brussels condemns violence in other European capitals, yet excuses Georgian rioters simply because they wave the EU flag

“If you stay silent about violence in Georgia, you will get the same violence, using the same methods, in your own capitals, and it will go on for as long as you turn a blind eye to violence in Georgia. That is the pattern at work here,” Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, said of the protests in European capitals.

Papuashvili said the EU is going through an identity crisis, and this is one expression of it.

“We can see this is no coincidence: parallel processes are underway in different cities, in the capitals of different countries. We must analyse this issue, but let’s be clear: the answer to why these processes and this violence are happening is staring us right in the face. It is the identity crisis that exists in the EU today. The EU is driving Europe towards a civilisational abyss. This is the result of Brussels’ domestic and foreign policy, which has brought various societies and countries to an identity crisis, and these protests express exactly that.

The violence may stop, but everything will be temporary until the EU fundamentally rethinks who it is, what it is, what identity it stands on, what its values are and what its European future is. The civilisational abyss we have warned of, towards which the EU is driving Europe, is precisely the process we are witnessing today. We want to spare Europe the fate of European civilisation ending up in the abyss. This is why we criticise Brussels and the EU; they are the very ones burying European civilisation. That is the core issue. Implementing a curfew or deploying force against protests does not address the underlying problem. The main issue is civilisational; a question of Europe’s values and identity.

We are also seeing violence identical to what happened in Georgia. Even the aesthetics are the same, and the methods are being repeated. We have seen how fireworks are used like machine guns. We are seeing this violence one for one. We see Brussels condemning this violence. Yet it turns a blind eye to Georgian perpetrators simply because they carry the European flag; for Brussels, they are not seen as violent. This is the consequence of tolerating such actions. When you turn a blind eye to violence in Georgia, you ultimately welcome that same violence into your own capitals. To this day, Pawel Herczynski refuses to condemn the storming of the Georgian Presidential Palace, the constitutional body to which he is accredited and which is the head of state of his host country,” Papuashvili said.