TBILISI -- Protesters in Georgia have provided detailed accounts to RFE/RL's Georgian Service of being brutally beaten by police during demonstrations against the government's decision to halt EU membership negotiations.
The police's use of excessive violence at the protests, which have taken place for six consecutive nights, has prompted a wave of revulsion in Georgia and condemnation abroad.
Nearly 300 people have so far been charged in relation to the protests, most on charges of petty hooliganism and resisting arrest. Here are just some of their stories.
Salome Zandukeli: 'Why Are You Hitting Me? I'm Not Your Child.'
At protests, Salome Zandukeli says, she likes to stand at the front and the night of December 2 was no different. With a friend, she stood in the first few lines of protesters on Rustaveli Avenue, the street in downtown Tbilisi that has been the center of the demonstrations.
When the police charged to break up the protest, Zandukeli and her friend fled, seeking refuge in a nearby office building. "I knew going in there was not a good idea," Zandukeli says. "But right then we couldn't think of anything else."
Shortly afterward, the security forces followed them in, and the two women tried to flee down some stairs.
"Probably 20-25 RoboCops were chasing us," Zandukeli says. "When I turned around, the first thing I thought of was to start filming them, but this annoyed one of them so much that he ran over to me and told me to turn off my cell phone. When I didn't, he snatched it out of my hand, threw it to the ground, and then slammed me against the wall."
The riot police started shouting and swearing at them, Zandukeli recounts, calling them c***s" and starting to beat them. She remembers seeing her friend Natia fall to the floor, trying to protect her head from the blows.
"They were hitting us in the head," she says, and I was shouting, "What is wrong with you?.... When I said to him, 'Why are you hitting me? I'm not your child,' he said, 'You are not my child, and that's why I'm hitting you.'"
The two women managed to get away, hiding in a bar along Rustaveli Avenue. But in a matter of minutes, Zandukeli says, the entire street was full of riot police. They turned off the lights in the bar and locked the door.
"If they had charged in, I don't know what would have happened to us," she says.
Gia Jvarsheishvili: 'Don't Let This Son Of A Bitch Die'
At 4 o'clock in the morning of December 2, the police had just fired tear gas into the crowd. As the protesters fled, fanning out into the streets around the parliament, Gia Jvarsheishvili, a disability activist, says he saw one of his female friends standing alone on a street corner, holding a flag in her hand.
Jvarsheishvili had been to political rallies before and thought he would be safe. "Sometimes I stand between the demonstrators and the police -- right in front of them -- and I have never been hit or arrested," he says. "I never do anything violent."
I survived just by chance.
This time, he wasn't so lucky. The security forces started running toward him, Jvarsheishvili says, "accusing him of throwing a Molotov cocktail." That was when they started beating him and telling him he wasn't worthy of the Georgian flag his friend was carrying, he says.
The officers forced him down onto the floor. He remembers his friend pleading with police to stop beating them.
Before taking him to a police van, they made him walk through a "corridor" of riot troops, all shouting abuse at him, he says. "They called out for the others to hear: 'This one threw a Molotov cocktail. Upon hearing that, I was attacked by another furious police officer." This time, he says, the attack was without mercy.
Later in the back of a police van, the police pushed the detainees down on the floor and began stamping on them, he says. Jvarsheishvili says he tried to hide under the seat to protect his face, but they still managed to get to him.
"Suddenly, I was in unbearable pain and I realized that I had been injured. I didn't know it then, but I had a broken rib," he says. Jvarsheishvili says he managed to crawl away. "I found it difficult to breathe. I heard them saying, 'Don't let this son of a bitch die.'"
After photographing him and taking his backpack, phone, and wallet, they finally took him for medical attention. "They're not worried about hurting people," he says. "I survived just by chance."
Zviad Ratian: 'They Just Kept Beating And Beating Me'
The video shows a man in an orange jacket being hauled through a mass of black-clad riot police. He is repeatedly punched by police officers as he is pulled through the crowd. At one point, he falls down, almost disappearing from view, as the police officers kick him and stamp on him. Then he is pulled back onto his feet to face more blows.
It was only because of his distinctive bright jacket that Zviad Ratian's friends knew that the man in the video was him.
Just before it happened, Ratian, a poet, says he was protesting with his friends in downtown Tbilisi. There was a scuffle, and he says he tried to protect his fellow protesters from the police.
"I just stood there, I didn't scream.... I just covered them with my hands," he says.
That was when his ordeal really began.
The police took him and beat him in the back of a van. "They just didn't stop. They just kept beating and beating me," says Ratian, who was left with a broken nose and internal bleeding.
He says he remembers one of the police officers punching him in the face and body. As his hands were tied, he says the only way he could try to avoid the blows was by turning away. "They couldn't break me," he adds.
At one point on the way to the detention center, the police van made a short stop and Ratian says a young man was pulled into the vehicle.
"He had been very badly beaten," he remembers. "[But the police officers] wrote down that he had fallen down the stairs."
Tornike Beradze: 'There Was A Puddle Of Blood'
"We were walking from Ingoroqva Street to Zubalashvili Street.... My brother was ahead of us, and me and one of our friends were following a little bit behind," says Tornike Beradze, who was recovering in the hospital with a concussion after he was arrested on the night of December 1.
First the riot police approached his brother, Beka, a journalist for RFE/RL's Georgian Service, aggressively asking why he was here, Beradze says. "When we saw what was happening, we approached them and asked them what was going on. We said that if this street was blocked, we could go another way."
As soon as he said this, he was summoned by two police officers. "They went through my pockets, took out my phone, wallet, house keys. They then ripped off my backpack and emptied it out [on the ground]," Beradze says.
"Inside, I had a water bottle and [gas] masks. They asked me what it was, if I had anything illegal, and then they hit me with the first punch," he says.
After beating him, Beradze says they put him in handcuffs and took him toward Rustaveli Avenue.
"I tried to tell my brother to be careful," Beradze says, as he was led away, "but when I looked back to tell him, I got punched in the face a few more times." Every time he raised his head, Beradze says, he was hit again.
The attacks continued when he was put in a police van, he says.
"It was a nightmare. Everyone had been beaten, and there was a puddle of blood [on the floor].... When I started to clean my face, the door opened, and the police officer hit me in the face again. Then the door opened again and my brother and my friend were brought in."
His brother, Beka, was also severely beaten by police. After being held at a temporary detention center, he was released at dawn on December 3.
