Former Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili joined anti-government demonstrators in Tbilisi on Tuesday, as around two thousand people gathered outside the Georgian parliament building for the sixth night of protests.
The protesters were seen carrying a poster of a girl who reportedly lost her eye to a rubber bullet in last week’s clashes with the police.
Some demonstrators announced that they had gone on hunger strike, with one woman reportedly taken to hospital due to low blood sugar.
The demonstrators are calling for the dismissal of Interior Minister Giorgi Gakharia, whom they accuse of being responsible for police’s reported excessive use of force on the first night of the protest, when some 240 people including 80 police officers were injured.
The demonstrations began after Russian MP Sergei Gavrilov addressed parliament from the seat of the Georgian parliamentary speaker during the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy on Thursday, prompting several Georgian opposition politicians to leave the session.