Tbilisi: Levan Loseliani, the Public Defender of Georgia warned the government. His warning concerned the potential risk involved in the Regulations implementation procedure under the recently adopted controversial Foreign Agents Law.
Two days ago during a briefing to the Justice Minister of Georgia Rati Bregadze, public defender said that “the decree issued by the Justice Minister on procedure for registration of organizations that can be termed as carrying interests of the foreign power may create the risks of discrimination action by the state.”
It is worth noting that according to the provisions of foreign agent law there are no specific guidelines describing the category of information that needs to be part of NGOs’ financial declarations. Moreoverforeign agent law leaves it up to the Minister of Justice to draw guidelines.
Notably the Minister of Justice’s decree authorised the publication of personal information under the provisions of foreign agent law. This personal information includes the data of employees such as their first name, last name, personal number and bank account number.
Moreover while speaking further on the topic the Public Defender added that publishing personal information is unjustified and dangerous. This will have huge negative effects on the employees of a particular organization that comes under the radar of foreign agents’ law.
In addition the Georgian public defender urged the Ministry of Justice to correct the decree without any compulsion of the publication of such information. He further underlined that the funding and its purpose can be shared with state institutions only in a depersonalized form.Th
e law was adopted despite the President’s veto. The President and many others have challenged it in constitutional court. The plaintiffs in all lawsuits have been demanding the suspension of the law as the ruling regimes can misuse it against opposition parties, NGO’s and CSO’s etc.
There were large-scale protests prior to the adoption of the foreign agent law. The law requires NGOs and other civil society organizations to register themselves if they receive more than 20 percent of their funding from any foreign country.
