A number of high-profile arrests were made during anti-government demonstrations in Georgia’s Black Sea coast city, Batumi, on the nights of January 11 and 12, in a renewed wave of police repression.

The Caucasus country has seen nightly protests since an announcement by the contested Georgian Dream (GD) government on November 28 that the country would be suspending its EU accession bid until 2028, a decision seen much of civil society as a betrayal of Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

Following a fortnight of violent police crackdowns on demonstrators in early December, protests have been broadly peaceful since the New Year, yet a swathe of arrests over the weekend in both Batumi and the Georgian capital Tbilisi signals an apparent new wave of repressive measures by the authorities to attempt to crush the resistance movement.

Among the ten citizens detained on in Batumi on January 11, the 45^th consecutive night of protests, was Mzia Amaglobeli, founder and editor-in-chief of Batumelebi, a Batumi-based news network, and its sister nationwide online magazine, Netgazeti.

According to a report from Georgian outlet Interpressnews on the morning on 12 January, four of the 10 people arrested in Batumi the previous night have now been released.

Batumelebi reported on the morning of January 12 that Amaglobeli is being investigated on criminal charges of assaulting a police officer under Article 353 of the Criminal Code, an action punishable by four to seven years in prison.

Journalists and activists, who came out in protest Tbilisi and Batumi on January 12, claim that the accusation that Amaglobeli assaulted a police officer is baseless, describing her arrest as a “crackdown on critical media”.

Amaglobeli was arrested twice during the January 11 protest in Batumi, first for pasting a sticker on the wall of the city’s main police station calling Georgians to join a nationwide strike scheduled for 15 January. She was released within two hours but was then immediately arrested again.

Amaglobeli’s lawyers were not permitted to speak with their client, but a representative of the Georgian Public Defender, who was able to visit the journalist, relayed her testimony that, during the scuffle outside the police station that had resulted in her second arrest, Amaglobeli had been squashed by the crowd and, in an attempt to free her hand, had accidentally hit Batumi police chief Irakli Dgebuadze, who was standing in front of her.

The evening of January 12 was marked by tense protests in both Batumi and Tbilisi demanding Amaglobeli’s immediate release. Batumi media outlets reported an unprecedented police mobilisation in the city, with additional units being brought in from the neighbouring Guria region.

Around 9pm Georgian time Helen Khoshtaria, leader of the Droa pro-Western opposition party, who had travelled to the Black Sea coast to support protesters, was detained during the protest outside Batumi’s Constitutional Court. Her arrest was followed by that of Giogi Kirtadze, another senior member of the Coalition for Change, of which Droa is a member.

Soon after, another Droa party member, Shushana Matsaberidze, was also reportedly arrested, and tensions between protesters and the police ensued.

A video of Khoshtaria’s arrest shows the Droa leader arguing with a police officer in the middle of a crowd of protesters as to why individuals were arrested on the evening of January 11 for putting up stickers announcing the January 15 strike, commenting that that is not an illegal act. Khoshtaria then placed a sticker on the arm of the officer and immediately was forcefully grabbed by several policeman and led to a police car.

Around 10:30pm local outlet Batumelebi reported that its cameraman and photographer, Guram Murvanidze, had been arrested whilst covering the rally in Batumi, which at the time of writing was still ongoing.