Kmara!

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Kmara! ( Georgian კმარა !, Eng. Enough! ) is a Georgian student and youth organization . She organized a political campaign against the government of Eduard Shevardnadze and played a key role in the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia .

Forerunner of Kmara! was the Georgian Student Movement , an organization of political students who organized mass demonstrations in October and November 2001 for the preservation of press freedom in Georgia.

Kmara! was founded in April 2003. It was based on the example of the Serbian youth movement Otpor! which contributed to the replacement of Slobodan Milošević's regime in 2000 . Georgian opposition members flew to Belgrade in February 2003 and met with Otpor! Representatives. Soon after, Otpor! Activists arrived in Tbilisi and trained around 800 Georgian students in three-day courses at the Freedom Institute in organizing non-violent political change.

Followers of Kmara! during the Rose Revolution, November 2003

The Shevardnadze government recognized the threat to maintaining power and tried Kmara! intimidate. In October 2003 demonstrations by Kmara! violently disbanded by the police in Tbilisi and Poti . Students who distributed Kmara! Leaflets were beaten up by members of the pro-government electoral alliance, and the Kmara office in Tbilisi was ransacked in a robbery.

During the Velvet Revolution in Georgia there was Kmara! the main organizer of the street protest. Its members made sure that the protests did not fall asleep even when they were tired.

Individual Kmara! Activists took on important political functions after the change of power in Georgia. They include the current mayor of Tbilisi Giorgi Ugulawa and the influential MP Giga Bokeria , who in 2003 was one of the inspirers of Kmara! counted.

Kmara was also involved in the street protests for the replacement of the Ajarian ruler Aslan Abashidze in the spring of 2004 and in the preparations for the Orange Revolution in Kiev in the autumn of the same year . In September 2005 , two Kmara members were temporarily detained by the police in Minsk for taking part in organizing protests against the Belarusian President Aljaksandr Lukashenka .

See also

literature

  • Zurab Karumidze, James V. Wert: "Enough!": The Rose Revolution in the Republic of Georgia 2003 . Nova Science Publications, New York 2005, ISBN 1-59454-210-4

Web links