While work and school have paused as Georgians celebrate New Year’s Day and Orthodox Christmas, protests are continuing. Tbilisi is far from the only area where a large swath of the population is angry with the Georgian Dream government’s turn away from the West and towards authoritarian Russia. Discontent is also running deep in the Black Sea region of Adjara. 

The regional capital, Batumi, has seen non-stop protests since November 28. While protesters have tried to keep the energy up with song and free spaghetti, the mood has become increasingly grim as the initial thousands of participants have declined to a couple hundred in recent days. Additionally, police have begun pressing charges for protest activity, including blocking roads.

Journalist Anna Gvarishvili went home to Batumi for the holidays and was disappointed to see bustling Christmas events side-by-side with sparsely attended protests. “I think the protests in general hit some kind of crisis at this point,” she said. “But I find it natural and I’m sure something will ignite it again.” 

Gela Shegiladze, a former soccer star who now coaches Tajikistan’s national team, has been out almost every night. He said Georgians started protesting because the government had rigged the elections and then because the government paused Georgia’s European Union accession process. “They say for four years, but it’s forever,” he said, referring to the government’s suspension of the European Union accession process. 

On December 16, he turned out to show solidarity with anti-government activists, journalists and others who had been arrested without cause amid the government crackdown. That evening, a storm caused the protest crowd to shrink to about a hundred or so of the most committed, huddled under borrowed patio umbrellas. Police said there were not enough of them to occupy the street, and after some negotiation, the protesters backed off to block only half the road. 

Batumi resident Lasha Oragvelidze was upbeat as he served protesters hot tea in paper cups disintegrating in the torrential rain. “Georgians were on the train to Europe,” he said. “We want new elections and the continuation of Euro integration.” 

The protests in the region extend beyond Batumi. On December 4, a small group of protesters gathered in the snow-blanketed upper Adjaran town of Khulo, demanding new elections, the release of detained protesters, and for local officials to condemn police violence in Tbilisi and elsewhere. In these remote mountains, they would probably be surprised to learn that Georgia’s anti-government protests are being portrayed in some corners as a minor expression of Tbilisi elite discontent. 

In recent weeks, when the weather cooperates, substantial crowds have taken to the streets of Batumi. Protesters argue with police, asking why they support the current government and the government-backed violence. Others, draped in Georgian and EU flags, kick around soccer balls, a reminder of the background of controversial, newly-appointed president, Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former soccer player. Government critics contend that the electoral process that installed Kavelashvili is illegitimate. 

Shegiladze, though a former player like Kavelashvili, did not have a sportsman’s fondness for Georgian Dream’s presidential appointee. “The citizens of Georgia will never give up. Georgians will fight to the end,” Shegiladze said. 

Minority groups, including Adjara’s Muslim community, are also dissatisfied. One recent afternoon, an older man chatted with a group of fellow worshippers at the Batumi New Mosque, a temporary structure erected by an Adjaran Muslim community that has been prevented from building a second mosque in the city by successive Georgian governments. The man said he supported the protests, though he was too old to attend himself. He and his companions had come down to the city for the winter, escaping harsh conditions in small villages in Khulo. Another man in the group said he was not sure if a new government would help them resolve the mosque issue but voiced a desire to see more political diversity in local governmental structures. “Diverse parties are better. We don’t want just one,” he said.

Giorgi Rizhvadze, an activist and student from Khulo, helped organize an open letter signed by over 100 Khulo youth, expressing solidarity with victims of police violence and calling for a peaceful, democratic, and European future for the country. 

While he believes the October parliamentary election was undemocratic, he also sees failures in opposition parties’ approach to Adjara, and rural areas more broadly. “It’s not just a pro-European protest. It’s about fundamental rights, human rights, and solidarity,” he said. “This [Georgian Dream-dominated] government isn’t managing effectively and addressing the issues of local people.” 

He mentioned local concerns including lack of gas pipelines, inconsistent water and electricity supplies, the poor condition of roads, and other “basics,” in addition to ongoing frustrations over the mosque issue. 

“A lot of opposition parties came to Adjara and engaged with people, they made statements and so on, but they didn’t say anything, for example, about Georgian Muslim issues, because they don’t want to make new agendas, they don’t want to deal with it. … But they have to,” said Rizhvadze, referring to the parliamentary election campaign.

“People have to see them [opposition politicians] as more efficient, they should feel like ‘when these guys come [to power], we are going to live in a better country,’” he added. 

Many Adjarians seemed happy to criticize the Georgian Dream government but are hesitant to endorse another party. The only signs of Georgian Dream support, beyond the disputed electoral results, were decaying election posters. 

One student voter in an even tinier village in the mountainous Keda municipality reluctantly revealed she had voted for former Georgian Dream prime minister-turned opposition leader Giorgi Gakharia’s party. She emphasized that no one in her family supported Georgian Dream. She had been attending protests in Batumi, with her family’s cautious support.

Many are cautious about revealing their political preferences.

“It’s really hard to organize a protest in Khulo because it’s a small community, everybody knows everybody,” said Rizhvadze. “You have to go and protest your relatives. It’s not easy.”

Because of these challenges, he said rural protesters would welcome support — from Tbilisi and from the media, whom he says fail to adequately cover rural issues. “When you are protesting in the regions, in a rural area, you need a lot of support. There is a lot of pressure.” 

Rizhvadze added that simple things like a laser projection of “Thanks to Khulo!” on Parliament in Tbilisi and supportive words during the Adjarian March in the capital on December 21 helped people from Khulo feel like they were also part of the demands for change. 

“You need to feel like you’re part of the movement,” he said. “And this kind of movement, you need to have it all over the country.”