As Georgia enters an election year likely to result in a win for illiberalism, LGBTQ activists are increasingly worried. They contend that although the government professes a desire to meet European Union standards for upholding basic rights, officials are abetting intolerance. To substantiate their case, they point to a dead-in-the-water investigation into right-wing violence stemming from the 2023 Pride Festival in Tbilisi.

For members of Georgia’s LGBTQ community, the significance of the attack last year cannot be understated. On July 8, a violent mob led by members of a far-right group, Alt-Info, surged into the festival grounds, setting fire to Pride flags, destroying property and threatening attendees; the violence forced organizers to cancel the remainder of the annual gathering. The US Embassy and United Nations called the incident an infringement on Georgians’ freedom to assemble while the country’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, blamed discriminatory political rhetoric for fanning homophobia.

The government launched an investigation, but its scope was limited from the outset to examining instances of theft and destruction of property. Investigators have not addressed the issue of infringement of fundamental rights. To leaders of the LGBTQ organization Tbilisi Pride, the event’s organizer, the ongoing official inquiry is missing the point.

“It was not just theft [that] happened there,” Mariam Kvaratskhelia, the co-director of Tbilisi Pride, told Eurasianet in an interview. “It was organized violence, it was breaking into someone’s property, it was persecution, it was a hate crime, and so on.”

Eurasianet asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs to clarify key points of the investigation in an emailed request for comment but did not receive a response.

The 2023 attack was not an anomaly. LGBTQ activists and activities have been targeted in the past, most notoriously in July 2021, when an anti-LGBTQ mob, including ultra-conservative Orthodox priests, ransacked Tbilisi Pride’s offices and attacked journalists.

In advance of the 2023 Pride Festival, according to notes reviewed by Eurasianet concerning discussions between organizers and authorities, government officials were well aware of the threat of violence, but allegedly took inadequate steps to ensure festival-goers’ security. Now, the lack of progress in the investigation is leaving many in Georgia’s LGBTQ community questioning the government’s ability and willingness to uphold their rights.

Tbilisi Pride felt the government’s follow-up to the 2023 violence was so inadequate that it filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights last November. The problem with going that legal route, however, is it could take years for the court to hand down a decision. And even if a favorable ruling is secured, it may do little to produce substantive changes for members of the LGBTQ community.

Georgia’s potential admission into the EU would do a lot to improve LGBTQ rights in the country, said Kvaratskhelia. At the same time, the government’s seeming indifference to upholding LGBTQ rights creates complications for the accession process. The Georgian Dream coalition, which dominates the government, has exhibited increasingly illiberal tendencies in its governing style in recent years.

Under current conditions, LGBTQ Georgians are left to wonder if threats and violence against them will continue to go unpunished. Some identifying as LGBTQ in Georgia have left the country in search of more accepting communities in Western Europe.

What happens next for Georgia’s LGBTQ community can serve as a bellwether of the country’s overall ideological direction. Once assumed to be moving inexorably towards the West, Georgia now seems increasingly divided internally. Those divisions are likely to sharpen as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in the fall. The Georgian Dream coalition is widely expected to retain power; opposition forces are fragmented.

The annual Pride Festival is a regular flashpoint for those internal divisions. It has emerged as a tangible sign of the country’s embrace of EU values – something that a majority of Georgians hope will blossom into full membership. At the same time, Pride Week is a lightning rod for powerful, illiberal elements in Georgia that strive to uphold what they describe as traditional values.

The event’s broader significance was not lost on organizers. At a meeting on June 30, representatives from both Tbilisi Pride and the Ministry of Internal Affairs recognized that holding a successful Pride Festival would go a long way toward demonstrating the government’s seriousness about conforming to EU rights standards, a condition it must meet if the country is to gain full EU membership. In short: a lot was on the line.

Right-wing activists, meanwhile, saw the event as an opportunity to express their rejection of what they portray as foreign influence that runs counter to traditional Georgian values. Signs of brewing trouble were evident in the days leading up to the Pride Festival.

At a meeting three days before the festival began, according to the notes reviewed by Eurasianet, a representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs told organizers that the agency had not investigated any of the threats, nor interviewed the people making them, despite requests from Tbilisi Pride. The ministry did agree to issue a statement aimed at discouraging potential violence which it released on July 7, the day before the festival.

Despite the high risk, the security force deployed by authorities was meager and no match for the up to 2,000 protesters who moved in to disrupt the gathering. The subsequent government investigation framed the incident as a case of property damage – not a hate crime.

Prosecutors also did not recognize the festival organizers and participants as victims. Under Georgian law, acknowledged victims of crimes have expanded rights during criminal investigations, enjoying the ability to present evidence and attend hearings. While rarely consequential in affecting a case’s outcome, it is an important official recognition of who suffered from a crime – usually physically – according to Lika Jalagania, a Tbilisi-based consultant on gender and LGBTQ rights.

“If they do not have the status [of victim], that means the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the prosecutor’s office does not recognize the violence that happened to that person,” she said.

Tbilisi Pride appealed the government’s decision in early fall not to label group members as victims. On Oct. 16, they received a letter from district prosecutor Archil Tkeshelashvili denying the request.

Kvaratskhelia, the Tbilisi Pride director, said that she is confident the European Court of Human Rights will eventually rule in the organization’s favor but that there is no guarantee it will result in long-term change for Georgia’s LGBTQ community.

According to Jalagania, the stalled investigation is part of a larger pattern of the government mishandling high-profile anti-LGBTQ cases. The investigation has become politicized, she believes, and by denying victim status the Ministry of Internal Affairs is delaying the case.

But in the long term, she cautioned against Georgians relying on European courts to administer justice, pointing out that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled on hate crimes directed toward Georgia’s LGBTQ community before, yet such incidents persist. “We need to create a demand in society, a demand for equality,” she said. “It is on us, and I think we have that agency to do that.”