Georgia to award medals to officials sanctioned by West for protest crackdown

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TBILISI (Reuters) – Five Georgian interior ministry officials who were sanctioned by the West for their role in a violent crackdown on pro-EU protesters will be presented with one of the country’s highest honours, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said on Friday.

Georgians have been protesting daily for three weeks since the government announced it was halting talks on joining the European Union – a longstanding and widely popular national goal – until 2028.

The officials to be decorated include Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri and heads of the ministry’s Special Tasks Department, which is accused of orchestrating beatings of opposition politicians and journalists, who were sanctioned by the U.S. and UK on Thursday.

Gomelauri, a former bodyguard to Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire ex-prime minister widely seen as Georgia’s paramount leader, was also promoted on Friday to deputy prime minister.

Police have used water cannon and tear gas against the crowds. Georgia’s government has accused the demonstrators of trying to stage a revolution and says more than 150 police officers have been injured in clashes with protesters who have thrown fireworks at them.

Georgia had been seen as among the most democratic and pro-Western of the Soviet Union’s successor states, but critics accuse it of moving in an increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian direction in the past several years.

Kobakhidze told reporters the government would compensate any officials who suffered financial losses as a result of the “unjust decision” to impose Western sanctions.

He said the officials were being rewarded for “the honourable actions carried out by the representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.” A total of 11 senior officials would be nominated for the Order of Honour, one of Georgia’s highest civilian medals.

(Reporting by Reuters in Tbilisi; Writing by Felix Light; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)