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00:00 Our correspondent Alicia Regis-Jant, who's at Stantebain Live, Regis, good evening to you.
00:04 At the scale of the police violence causing alarm now outside of Georgia, tell us the latest on the situation.
00:10 The latest is that this evening the Parliament voted for the law on the second reading
00:16 and it was quite expected but it was voted in a hurry, in quite a hidden way let's say,
00:22 and as we expected it raised a lot of anger in the country and tonight there is now
00:29 underway a very big demonstration, one of the biggest I ever observed in this country
00:34 within for 20 years, very important showing how determined are the people which are opposing to
00:41 this law. Still the government says that they want absolutely to adopt it in the coming days
00:47 or in the coming two weeks let's say and we can say that now the fight between the governments
00:52 and the opposition forces, which are not the political opposition, just the civil society,
00:57 the youth which are going to the street because they don't want to be back in the Russian sphere
01:02 of influence let's say. So Georgia has to be followed in the coming days because the events
01:08 can be very very important for the future of this country. Regis, we'll be talking constantly
01:12 about it, clearly you're there for us and you've been there for the past two decades as you say,
01:16 you know the country inside out. If this bill becomes law, as it looks like it will, do you think
01:23 that the violence will get worse? Yeah it's really possible and again the mood we could
01:29 observe tonight in the demonstration just a few minutes ago while I was there, I still have some
01:34 gas in the ears, we see the determination and on both sides we saw also the government tonight,
01:41 the Prime Minister for example talking, saying that they will at any cost adopt this law. So
01:47 we see that we are going towards the crisis more and more and probably tonight there were like 80
01:52 or 100 thousand people in the street for a small country as 3.7 million, it's really a huge huge
01:59 amount of people retiring the streets. Is Georgia on the brink then of this greater civil instability?
02:04 I think that's the case, yes I think you've just answered that one but what I'm wondering is,
02:08 is this something Russia is standing by to take advantage of? Russia of course already
02:12 is running South Ossetia, Abkhazia, regions of Georgia they took in 2008.
02:18 Yeah absolutely and we should always also not forget that the war in Ukraine that we observe
02:24 now in Ukraine, it really started in Georgia in 2008. This is the same war and the wording,
02:30 the method, the way that Russia is conducting this war is the same than the one which started
02:36 in Georgia back in 2008. So what happened now in Georgia is obviously something which was pushed
02:42 by the Russians and by the way we had a lot of messages these last days from the Minister of
02:47 Foreign Affairs of Russia, the former President Medvedev, supporting the Georgian government to
02:52 adopt this law. So what's happened is also somehow part of the war of Russia against Ukraine and
03:00 basically against the West and other foreign, I mean other countries in the near abroad of Russia
03:06 which want to become part of the European and the Western world. Regé-Chant, Interlici, thank you
03:11 very much indeed. Rinse your eyes sir, take care of them, that tear gas stings badly doesn't it?
03:16 Regé-Chant, our correspondent, bring us the very latest on the situation and of course
03:20 he has a watching brief. Thank you sir for being with us. We'll be speaking to the...