Dominik Reichert’s skull was fractured while he filmed anti-government demonstrations in Tbilisi
RT DE correspondent Dominik Reichert is recovering in a local hospital after being shot in the head with a rubber bullet while covering anti-government protests in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
Reichert was filming outside the national parliament on Rustaveli Avenue on Thursday night, as pro-EU demonstrators attempted to tear down barricades keeping them out of the building. After riot police succeeded in pushing back the crowd, he filmed the protesters standing off against the officers from a distance, when he suddenly fell and dropped his camera.
Reichert rose to his feet and turned the camera toward himself to show the blood running down his face, before leaving the area.
“I suddenly heard a loud bang,” Reichert explained in a video filmed from his hospital bed on Friday. “I was deaf for a few seconds. I didn’t feel anything at that moment, but seconds later I noticed that blood was running down the side of my face.”
Reichert said that he approached an ambulance and was taken to a nearby hospital, where his fractured skull was operated on.
“Even though I didn’t see directly that somebody was shooting at me, that I was shot by a rubber bullet is the only logical explanation,” he said. “The injury was way too strong for a stone or some little thing like that.”
Thursday’s protest began after Georgia’s pro-EU president, Salome Zourabichvili, accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of declaring “war” on its own people by postponing EU accession talks until 2028. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said earlier on Thursday that his government does not renounce the ultimate goal of joining the bloc, but that the country should not bow to “constant blackmail and manipulation” from Brussels.
Relations between Brussels and Tbilisi soured earlier this year when Georgia adopted two laws; one requiring NGOs that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “promoting the interests of a foreign power,” and another banning the dissemination of LGBTQ propaganda.
Georgian Dream, which won nearly 54% of the vote in parliamentary elections last month, favors stable relations with both the EU and Russia. Zourabichvili and the pro-Western opposition parties have refused to recognize the results of the vote.
Some 32 police officers were injured during Thursday’s protest, and 43 demonstrators were arrested, the Georgian Interior Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The arrests were made for “disobeying lawful police orders and for petty hooliganism,” the ministry said.
