Police brutality is not stopping Georgia’s protests

THE FACE of the woman in the courtroom was covered in green and yellow bruises. She was being fined 500 lari ($178); police had arrested her at an anti-government protest. They had also, she said, shattered her orbital bone. Many of the demonstrators filing through Tbilisi’s courts have such wounds: bandaged skulls, splints on broken noses. They target the face, says Tamar Oniani of Georgia’s Association of Young Lawyers. It creates a public signal that “if you’re gonna come here again, then you receive this.”