Police Restrict Armenian Genocide Remembrance Event Near Turkish Embassy Under Newer Rally Laws

A local Armenian community group said on April 24 that the Georgian Interior Ministry has denied them holding an Armenian Genocide remembrance event near the Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi in a break of tradition and under stricter rally laws that require advance police notice and allow the ministry to request changing time, location, and route of a demonstration.

Armenian Community of Georgia, a non-governmental organization, said in a statement that the community has been holding a peaceful event on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, marked on April 24 to commemorate the victims of a mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century, for twenty years near the Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi.

According to the group, in 2026, too, they applied to Tbilisi City Hall in advance, “in full compliance with Georgian law and terms,” but received a call from a representative of the Georgian patrol police notifying a rejection to hold an event at the traditional place, citing the need “to avoid potential risks.”

The group said it took them days to trace the original letter in public agencies.

The Interior Ministry’s letter, when finally obtained, reportedly cited the provisions of recently tightened protest laws which allow police to request a change in time, location, or the form of an assembly. The laws, adopted in December, cite a need to strike a “balance” between freedom of assembly and rights of those living, working, or pursuing entrepreneurial activities in the areas of a planned rally, as well as public safety and order and uninterrupted movement of transport and people, and “other human rights and freedoms.”

“Since there is a probability of violation of the requirements of the above-mentioned norm by holding the assembly at the site you indicated, given its placement and location, we ask you to consider the advisability of changing the location of the assembly,” the group quoted the Ministry’s letter.

The community group said such decisions are taken “in a non-transparent form” and the parties are notified “with significant delay.”

“This practice does not comply with the rule of law standards and undermines the trust in state institutions,” the group said, adding that they “do not find it possible to change the location of the event and won’t be holding the event that has turned into a tradition at any other address but the territory near the Turkish Embassy.”

From Notification to De Facto Permit Regime?

The ruling Georgian Dream party introduced in December stricter police notice rules as part of yet another package restricting the freedom of assembly, in an apparent attempt to crack down on daily anti-government rallies on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue. Over the past months, however, other groups, too, reported restrictions on holding rallies at desired places, including miners from Chiatura who had arrived to hold protests in Tbilisi.

Under the new rules, organizers of rallies to be held “in areas of movement of people or transport” are required to notify the Ministry of Internal Affairs no less than five days in advance for non-spontaneous rallies and “immediately within a reasonable time” for spontaneous rallies.

The ministry will have three days to review the request and propose an alternative location, time, or route if the planned gathering “poses a real threat to public safety, public order, the normal functioning of enterprises, institutions, and organizations, the unimpeded movement of vehicles and people, or to human rights and freedoms.”

Those who fail to comply with the ministry’s orders will be treated as offenders and face detention of up to 15 days for participants and up to 20 days for organizers. Critics, including Georgia’s Public Defender, have warned that such provisions risk effectively introducing a de facto permit regime that contradicts the Georgian Constitution.

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Saturday Mothers commemorate Armenian intellectuals

At their 1100th vigil in Istanbul, the Saturday Mothers commemorated the Armenian intellectuals who were detained on April 24, 1915. The arrests are considered the beginning of the genocide against the Armenians.

Relatives attended the gathering carrying photographs of the disappeared and carnations, accompanied by numerous human rights defenders. This time, the focus was on the remembrance day of the Armenian genocide and the deportation of the Armenian elite in Istanbul—an event regarded as the beginning of the genocide. The statement was read by lawyer Eren Keskin from the Human Rights Association (IHD).

On the night of April 24 to 25, 1915, the Young Turk regime under Interior Minister Talat Pasha ordered the arrest of numerous Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul. The arrests were carried out on the basis of prepared lists. Police units went to the homes of those concerned and claimed that they were to be taken for short interrogations. The detainees, including members of parliament, writers, doctors, journalists, and academics, were first taken to police stations and then transferred to the central prison of Sultanahmet. They were among the leading figures of Armenian society.

On April 25, the detainees were deported by special train toward Ayaş and Çankırı in central Anatolia. In the following days, the wave of arrests expanded; in total, around 250 Armenian intellectuals were detained. For many of them, this path ended in death: the majority were murdered in the following months, and many remain missing to this day. In official records, their fates were often later obscured with entries such as “escaped” or “released.”

As part of the vigil, Haçadur Malumyan (Agnuni), one of the founders of the Armenian newspaper “Azadamard,” was also commemorated. He was arrested on the night of April 24 and initially deported to Ayaş. From there, he sent a telegram to Talat Pasha demanding his release, but without success.

On June 2, 1915, Malumyan, together with five other intellectuals, was transferred under the pretext of being brought before a court in Amed (tr. Diyarbakır). On the way, near Siverek, the group was murdered by an armed unit linked to the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, a paramilitary apparatus of the Ottoman Empire. Their deaths were also later concealed.

In the press statement, Keskin described the deportation of Armenian intellectuals as the beginning of a “great catastrophe” and at the same time drew a connection to the present. “Failing to confront the past nourishes today’s lawlessness and the culture of impunity,” Keskin said. Even after 1,100 weeks, the Saturday Mothers maintain their demand for truth and justice, adding: “No matter how many years pass, we will not forget our disappeared. Against forgetting, we defend memory; against denial, the truth.”

At the end, Saturday Mother Hanife Yıldız spoke about the ongoing search for the disappeared. “These weeks may be easy to say, but what we have experienced, how we have been burned, continues,” she said, accusing those responsible of still “not wanting to hear.”

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Rep. Friedman Speaks at ANCA Burbank’s Armenian Genocide Commemoration

By George Christopher Thomas