The End of the Rainbow?

Vashlovani Street in Tbilisi was once the beating heart of Georgia’s gay scene - a block where nearly every door led to a bar or restaurant and the night thrummed to the music emanating from clubs like Success or Mimosa, while Georgians and tourists alike crowded the streets till the early hours.

On a corner of the street stands the headquarters of Tbilisi Pride, founded in 2019 to represent and advocate for the rights of Georgia’s LGBTQ community, which has long been the target of harassment and violence. In 2021, a crowd of nationalists stormed the building, climbed onto the third-floor balcony, and tore the organisation’s rainbow flag into pieces.

Despite the attack, Tbilisi Pride weathered the storm. Its members re-raised their rainbow flag, and the gay clubs and bars continued to welcome guests. Recent changes in the law, however, have had a more chilling effect. Vashlovani Street, once known by activists as “Georgia’s 100 Yards of Freedom,” is now a deserted shadow of its former self.

Tamar Jakeli, the 28-year-old director of Tbilisi Pride shared with The Black Sea a number of Facebook posts by the ruling Georgian Dream party. The posts explicitly identify her and other LGBTQ and Amnesty International activists, describing them as people “demoralizing” Georgian society. “That is a real threat to my life,” Jakeli said. “At least a dozen transgender people have already packed and left the country in fear of this violence.”

After the still-disputed election results of 26 October – when Georgian Dream controversially declared victory amid accusations by opposition members and observers of widespread ballot stuffing and voter intimidation – the country’s LGBTQ community is holding its breath.

Founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvilli, Georgian Dream came to power in 2012, four years after a brief but bruising war with Russia. The party published a 12-point manifesto that included closer cooperation with NATO and the EU and the development of a liberal democracy.

Soon after the election, Ivanishvili, the prime minister at the time, articulated a more nuanced approach to foreign relations. While he insisted that Georgia should apply for NATO membership, he also said: “I will constantly make steps to improve our relations with Russia; restoration of friendship with Russia, our biggest neighbour, is necessary for our peace and economy.”

Since taking power, Georgian Dream, which has remained in government and is still widely thought to be controlled by Ivanishvili, has restored flights, though not diplomatic relations, with Russia. In a country that suffered tens of thousands of deaths in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, authorities erected new statues and reliefs of Stalin to make citizens proud of the Georgia-born dictator.

It has also taken an increasingly hard line with dissenters, in stark contrast to its ambitions when it first entered government.

In 2023, Georgian Dream proposed a “Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence” bill that would require NGOs, broadcasters, and print and online media organisations to register as “agents of foreign influence” if more than 20% of their annual income came from a “foreign power.” Opposition leaders and civil society organisations condemned the law as an attack on the freedom of the press and the bill was withdrawn following mass protests.

In 2024, the bill was re-introduced to parliament and was made law on 14 May, sparking more mass protests that reportedly drew 100,000 Georgians to the streets. Rallies rocked the capital for weeks and protestors decried what they termed “Russian laws,” anti-democratic legislation that appears to be modelled on similar laws passed in Moscow, where more than 800 people have been designated “foreign agents” since its introduction in 2012.

In response to the law, the EU effectively froze Georgia’s status as a candidate member and suspended $32 million in aid to the country’s defence ministry. The US also paused $95 million of foreign assistance funds.

Georgian Dream doubled down. The party went on to introduce a legislation package known as “On Family Values and Protection,” which targeted the rights of the gay and trans of Georgia. Among the things to be outlawed were “alternative marriage unions,” gender reassignment surgery, and the broadcasting of information or “propaganda” about same-sex relationships.

Opposition parties boycotted parliament. “This is just a catastrophe for our reforms, our democracy. We are quickly moving backwards,” Jakeli told The Black Sea.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, the first female head of state in the Caucasus, refused to sign the bills and returned the package to parliament. Georgian Dream was undeterred. Despite these obstacles, on 3 October, the party’s chairman and Speaker of the Parliament Shalva Papuashvili managed to pass the new legislation.

For many LGBTQ in Georgia, the package represented a dangerous call to violence in a country with a history of homophobic attacks and where gender-sensitive attitudes were in their nascency. “We have been attacked many times before the bill. We have experienced violence; we are seriously worried about our activists’ security now,” said Giorgi Tabagari, Georgian civil and queer activist, on the day the law passed.

On 18 September, the day after the “family values” had its third reading in parliament, the county’s most famous trans woman, 37-year-old model and influencer Kesaria Abramidze was stabbed to death in her apartment in Tbilisi. Police arrested her 26-year-old ex-boyfriend, Beka Jaiani, who remains in custody.

“The police told us that he had admitted to it. They had agreed to meet that day to discuss their photographs published on social media,” the model’s close friend, Maia Asatiani, said in an interview for The Black Sea. “He killed her. He stabbed her 28 times.”

Asatiani is one of Georgia’s most prominent television presenters. She said she was feeling heartbroken over the loss of Kesaria, who six years ago became the first woman to come out on television and talk openly about her transition, which she did on Asatiani’s popular TV show “Profil.”

“She was a kind, sensitive person full of light. She supported many transgender people in Georgia. Her murder was terrifying to the entire community. All those who knew her are still in shock,” Asatiani said.

Hundreds of Georgians came to Kesaria’s funeral, including President Zourabichvili. The president’s support meant a great deal to Kesaria’s friends, family, and the entire LGBTQ community. But then the election in October soured their hopes for justice. There was a serious concern that the conservative government would release the murderer on parole and that he would not serve the full sentence for his crime. “Our biggest worry is that the killer would go to a mental clinic now and then after a few years get out on parole,” Asatiani said.

The parliamentary election was a disaster for anyone hoping for a change in direction and closer ties to Europe. Georgian Dream claimed victory with 53.4% of the vote. International observers reported vote-buying, ballot stuffing, and intimidation, while U.S. pollsters HarrisX and Edison Research, commissioned by the opposition, said that the official result was “statistically unexplainable” and suggested a “local-level manipulation of the vote.”

President Zourabichvili denounced the elections as “rigged and stolen,” winning the praise of opposition leaders. Nino Dolidze of the pro-Western, pro-LGBTQ Droa Party told The Black Sea that President Zourabichvili had played a key role in uniting the opposition into a coalition “in a purely smart, intelligent and diplomatic way,” adding that everybody liked her.

The international fallout has been considerable. On 28 November, the EU adopted a resolution condemning the election, calling for a re-run under international supervision and seeking personal sanctions against top ruling party leaders, including its founder, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.

That same day, Georgian Dream announced that they were suspending all the EU membership talks until the end of 2028. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said: “We decided not to put the issue on the agenda.”

The response from the Georgian population – 79% of whom support joining the EU – was immediate. Thousands of people took to the streets, and over 300 activists and demonstrators, including opposition leaders, have so far been arrested during the violent police crackdown.

It was a unique moment in Georgian history when over 100 of Tbilisi’s own diplomats reportedly protested against the government’s actions. Within days of the announcement, the Georgian Ambassadors to Lithuania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and the United States had resigned.

There is precedent for repeating an election under the pressure of street protests. Ukraine in 2004 repeated the second round of the presidential election after opposition demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution.

President Zourabichvili said she has always tried to stay independent from the ruling party but admits her politics are firmly pro-EU and pro-NATO. She told me in an interview in 2018 that her ultimate goal was “to reunify Georgia and enter the European Union.”

Paris-born Zourabichvili knows the thoughts of Western governments better than many, having served as a diplomat in Rome, at the United Nations, in Washington and Brussels. She condemned the government’s decision to abort the EU accession process as a ‘’constitutional coup.”

She said, “Today, this illegitimate government has declared not peace but war.” Last Monday, she told CNN: “Almost every city in Georgia is protesting; people are asking just two things: one is ‘give me my vote back,’ which was stolen during the election and the second is ‘give me my European future back.”

Meanwhile, on Saturday the United States suspended its 15-year-long strategic partnership with Georgia. “We are standing on; to protest is the only plan,” opposition leader Dolidze told The Black Sea on Sunday. The Georgian President had been in touch with several world leaders about the ongoing street rallies. “The President is speaking with Donald Trump’s administration, too. We believe that America’s support for us is bipartisan,” Dolidze said.

For many, though, a political failure has also become a very personal tragedy.

Jakeli and two other LGBTQ activists, Alisa Sanakoyeva and Mari Tsulaia, were supposed to gather on 27th October for a twice-yearly event called Wings of Desire, which promised to celebrate beauty, cherish high drama, and question all kinds of boundaries. The three friends, however, did not attend it.

Instead, they spent the night monitoring an election that they considered the most crucial of their generation with a sense of unfolding horror. In the immediate aftermath, the sting of the outcome was made worse at the time by what Jakeli and her friends considered a lack of engagement from the West, felt even more acutely since the election of Donald Trump.

A few days later, Sanakoyeva, dressed in a gothic outfit, told The Black Sea that she was applying for a graduate program at a German university and planned to leave the country.

Meanwhile, Tsulaia, dressed as a magical creature for a Halloween party, was torn. “I was walking on the street and tried to smile at people but I just saw gloomy faces turned towards me. If there is no change, our only option is to run from our country.”

Today, the rainbow flag still flutters from the balcony of Tbilisi Pride, but Jakeli is under no illusions as to the pressure her community faces.

“Our rainbow flag is the only one flying in the entire country,” she told me. “And there is nobody to protect us.”