Georgia’s Tired Democracy and the Woman Who Keeps It Awake

Quelle: IPN.ge

In Georgia these days, if you keep your eyes open, you can witness something that feels as though it belongs to another era. On Rustaveli Avenue, in the very heart of Tbilisi, stands a small, elderly woman with a firm gaze and a Georgian flag in her hand. Her name is Aza Chilachava, seventy-one years old, displaced from Gagra (Abkhazia), now a symbol of the moral stubbornness that has become rare in this country. Standing on the asphalt, facing the police, she appears almost unintentionally like a figure from a different time. No saint, no visionary, simply a citizen who refuses to give up on her country.

A Woman of Duty

Aza Chilachava believes in something earthly, yet no less sacred: in her homeland, in its dignity, and in the freedom not to live under Moscow’s shadow. When she was arrested on November 2, 2025, in Tbilisi officially because she “stood on the roadway” and “wore a face mask”—she smiled. In court she said she would return. “I’ll go back to the street, I’ll be the first one.” An old woman who knows she may be detained again. Yet she speaks as though of a duty, not a choice.

A State That Punishes Courage

That sense of duty is precisely what Georgia’s government seems unwilling or unable to understand. Judge Tornike Kochkiani sentenced Chilachava to one day in detention, as if it were a bureaucratic formality, not a political act. The Ministry of Internal Affairs had requested that “detention be used as the most appropriate measure.” As though civil disobedience were a minor disturbance to be switched off for twenty-four hours. But nothing about this scene is trivial. A seventy one year old woman protesting for her country is taken away, while the state continues refining its repressive laws to maintain control over such bodies.

Laws Against Citizens

While Europe debates Georgia’s EU candidate status, Tbilisi is swiftly passing laws that contradict European values. The Law on Public Assemblies, adopted in October 2025, now allows up to two years in prison for protesters who block a road or cover their faces. Protest itself has become criminalized. The police decide who counts as a citizen and who as a delinquent. The courts nod. The government applauds. Democracy remains silent.

A Society at a Standstill

One cannot help but recall the stories of individuals who stood alone against power without weapons, without parties, without protection. Georgia’s government responds with codes, arrests, and cynicism. Aza Chilachava is no mythical heroine; she is an affront to a society that has grown used to fear, and to a power that knows only force, never shame.

When Civil Courage Becomes Dangerous

Ironically, it is the banality of it all the paper shimmer of an administrative penalty, the careless gesture of a police officer that gives her story its weight. Heroes are not born from grandeur but from the inability of power to tolerate humanity. Aza Chilachava is, for now, only imprisoned. Yet even that is a scar: a sign of a country that criminalizes its oldest citizens for saying what the young have stopped daring to think.

The Price of Dignity

For almost a year, pro-European demonstrations have continued across Georgia. Protesters demand new elections, fair courts, and the release of political prisoners. The government answers with tear gas, decrees, and propaganda. Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, the man meant to guarantee the constitution, recently made the government’s thinking painfully clear though unintentionally. Asked about Aza Chilachava, he replied that one should “ask the EU ambassador,” who “sacrifices these people to score political points.” That is the official narrative: the West manipulates, the opposition incites, the police protect. And if a seventy-one-year-old woman ends up in detention well, collateral damage in the name of order.

A Country That Fears Its Citizens

It is this rhetorical shift that makes Georgia dangerous. Not a single case, but the normalization of viewing one’s own citizens as adversaries. Institutions that draw legitimacy from fear lose their soul. Aza Chilachava wears no armor and hears no angels, but she proves that courage can be contagious and that even an old body can mirror an entire nation.

A Silent Symbol

On Rustaveli Avenue, where candles flicker every evening, she stands again. Perhaps she will be arrested tomorrow, or the day after. Perhaps she will fall ill. But for one moment one brief, unguarded moment Georgia, this weary, exhausted, manipulated Georgia, becomes visible again for what it could be: a country that has not yet forgotten its bravest citizens.