This is the Popular Front podcast with me Jake Hanrahan. We're focused on the niche details of modern warfare and underreported conflict all across the world.

Popular Front is completely independent. Today we're speaking to Mariam Rigwaba. She's a journalist and activist from Georgia.

She's talking to us about the evolution of the anti-government protests in her country, Georgia,

specifically focusing on the fact that the police have started using chemical weapons on demonstrators.

Recently, World War I chemical stocks were deployed, burning people's skin, doing God knows what to their lungs.

It's a lot.

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The last time we covered Georgia on Popular Front,

it looked like the protests were really ramping up.

Things were different, I guess, like this time. I think it was Gatsu we last spoke to about it. And then it all kind of died off. I do understand that there's

been a lot of heavy-handed new laws being put in place to try and stop protesters. People have

been getting hurt again.

Maybe you can just take us through kind of like the last six months.

What's actually been happening in Georgia?

As far as I understand, unfortunately, the protests have not really worked.

Okay, so yeah, the timeline has been really chaotic.

For the last six months, everything has like changed because we've seen the

unprecedented backlash from the government. So the like number of political prisoners went

from more than 100. So right now if we see the the number of political prisoners in Russia, per person who lives in Russia, it's like much bigger and larger here in Georgia.

So we have more political prisoners than in Russia for the population of our country.

So it's been really crazy.

It's been really chaotic.

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