By the decision of the Georgian Dream, the article “Treason” will be added to the Criminal Code. The statement about the decision was made by the Executive Secretary of the Georgian Dream, Mamuka Mdinaradze, at a briefing after the majority session.
Mdinaradze claimed that the article had been removed from the Code by the National Movement.
“By our decision, the article ‘Treason’ will be added to the Criminal Code of Georgia, or it would be more correct to say, it will be restored in the Criminal Code, having been removed by the National Movement. No matter how surprising or not surprising that is, it happened, and it was done prior to the August War, in April 2007,” Mdinaradze added.
FARA and a media law ‘inspired by the UK’
During the same press briefing, Mdinaradze also shared additional information about two new pieces of legislation he had announced earlier in February: a law which he said would replace the controversial foreign agent law and would be a copy of the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and a ‘media law’ inspired by British legislation.
He said that the two laws will be submitted to parliament and that their initial versions would prevent public sector agencies from receiving benefits from foreign services, and would also exclude civil society organizations from participation in decision-making processes in the government or parliament.
Mdinaradze again said that Georgian Dream’s version of FARA would allegedly be an exact copy of the American law.
The foreign agent law labels any civil society or media organization that receives at least 20% of its funding from abroad ‘organizations carrying out the interests of a foreign power’. Such organizations must register as foreign agents in a special registry and are subject to monitoring every six months, which lawyers have warned could include forcing them to hand over internal communications and confidential sources.
Mdinaradze has said that the media law ‘mainly concerns “fake news” and will be adopted ‘taking into account the principles of the British model’.
Mdinaradze again did not provide any further details about the two draft laws.
Related story: Georgian Dream to propose new restrictive media law
