After showpiece armed raids on techno clubs Bassiani and Cafe Gallery, protesters took to the streets and faced aggression from nationalist radicals

Hand-held flares sent plumes of smoke into the twilight sky above the grand arched facade of Tbilisi’s old parliament building on Saturday night, as the Georgian capital’s main boulevard erupted into a carnival of dissent.



Fierce techno riffs blasted out from a soundsystem on the steps of the state building as several thousand ravers raised their arms and cheered in jubilant defiance after armed police raids on two of Tbilisi’s most celebrated clubs hours earlier, which they saw as an attack on their generation and their culture.

Placards urged tolerance and denounced repression. “We don’t want another P*tin here,” one declared. Another had a message for the authorities who ordered the operation: “Our love is louder than your fear.”

Earlier on Saturday, at around 1am, interior ministry special police units carrying automatic weapons had raided Bassiani and Cafe Gallery, two clubs at the centre of the explosion of techno culture in Tbilisi in recent years. Eight alleged dealers were arrested in a showpiece anti-narcotics operation, after the deaths in recent weeks of at least five young people who are believed to have taken drugs while out clubbing.

“People were having a party and dancing, then the first thing I saw was these men with guns rushing in,” said Nutsa Kukhianidze, who was working at Cafe Gallery when the police raided. “The first armed policeman went to the DJ, Bacho [Chaladze], telling him to turn the music off, and then they were yelling and screaming and putting everybody on the floor.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Inside Bassiani, Tbilisi, one of the clubs that was raided.

The raids sparked off a dramatic weekend of events that culminated with rightwing extremists massing in a furious counter-demonstration on Sunday evening and riot police being deployed on the streets to hold them back as they tried to attack the techno protesters.

Militants from the Georgian Civil Unity group, who described themselves as “true Georgians” seeking to “protect our country”, had limbered up for the showdown by doing Nazi salutes. The nationalist radicals of the Georgian March movement, who have previously staged demonstrations against immigrants, denounced the techno protesters as “drug propagandists” and “sodomites”. They were particularly enraged by images of a young woman dancing on top of a memorial to Georgians killed by Soviet troops in 1989.

Outside the police cordon, protesters were chased and intimidated. Mariam Murusidze, who runs a record label in Tbilisi, said that she and her friends sought refuge in a church courtyard as a group of drunken men wearing masks surrounded them. “They kept repeating how they would kill us,” Murusidze said.

The extremists’ offensive highlighted continuing divisions within a society whose emerging democracy is in a fragile state of transition, and brought back memories of May 2013, when thousands of hardline Orthodox Christians tried to wreak bloody vengeance on a tiny group of LGBT activists.

In this socially conservative former Soviet country, the clubs that were raided are beacons of tolerance and progressive values. Bassiani, a cavernous concrete pleasure dome beneath the national football stadium, also operates a companion LGBT club called Horoom. The more intimate Cafe Gallery is the pioneering LGBT-friendly dance venue that first started to nurture Georgian techno culture in 2010. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal since 2000 and laws prevent discrimination on grounds of sexuality. But gay marriage remains illegal and LGBT Georgians often face hostility, so clubs such as these have become safe spaces.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police officers scuffle with counter-protesters during the rally against the government’s anti-drug policy in Tbilisi on 13 May. Photograph: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters

Bassiani is also connected with the White Noise activist movement, which campaigns for the liberalisation of Georgia’s punitive drug legislation.

“The raid was not an operation against drug dealers – it was an operation against freedom,” insisted Bassiani’s co-owner Zviad Gelbakhiani, who was detained for several hours in the aftermath. Like both clubs’ other owners, he has not been charged with any criminal offence.

Techno emerged earlier this decade as a mass youth movement in this small Caucasus state, and has become the soundtrack to the lives of thousands of European-oriented Georgians who want a more socially liberal future.

They are from the generation that grew up in the years after independence from the Soviet empire, immersed in the turbulent political atmosphere of a country turning away from Moscow and towards Europe. The shift was sealed by Georgia’s brief but brutal war with Russia in 2008, but the changes in the country have caused friction between liberals and conservatives, as was starkly evident on 14 May.

“Techno was the medium our generation found to express our free speech,” Gelbakhiani explained. “It is a movement for progressive western values. I think that some of these people who are trying to stop us don’t want these clubs to exist because they do not want western values.”

The protests that followed the raids were techno-as-free-speech in action, Gelbakhiani argued: “They didn’t let us dance in the club, so we came out to the streets. We didn’t have any other option. The question is, are we going to be a free country?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Noisy protest from those opposing the club raids. Photograph: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters

While the raids caused outrage among some young people, the police operation was supported by other Georgians who were worried by the drug-related fatalities, and cheered by religious conservatives and government officials. “The fact of the matter is that we have faced massive promotion of drugs in the recent period, and drug use has become unfettered,” argued MP Dimitri Khundadze from the ruling Georgian Dream party.

In an unfortunate irony, the mayor of Tbilisi, former AC Milan football star Kakha Kaladze, had recently announced the city’s first “night-time economy manager” to develop nightlife’s potential to attract tourists. The man whom Kaladze appointed, Sergi Gvarjaladze, a veteran of Tbilisi’s electronic music scene, admitted that after all the glowing coverage that the city’s techno culture had received, the raids had marred its desired image as a vibrant, creative hotspot.

“These people just went out for an evening to dance, and to have people with machine guns enter the club is unacceptable,” Gvarjaladze said. “This whole situation is very damaging for the country. It’s in nobody’s interests right now. What is needed is dialogue.”

The interior ministry said the raids were ordered after a three-month surveillance operation to identify dealers it suspected were linked to the clubs, and insisted that the “high level of security during the operation” was necessary amid its “uncompromising struggle against the illegal trade in drug substances”.

But the parliament-appointed public defender, Nino Lomjaria, claimed the suspects were actually arrested earlier in the evening, not inside the clubs – raising questions about why the armed operation was necessary.

Some expressed suspicions that it was meant to send a warning to Tbilisi’s young ravers. “I think they want to have the youth under control and afraid of the government, afraid to say anything, the way it used to be in the Soviet Union days,” Kukhianidze suggested.

Judging by the turnout at the protests, this suspected warning backfired. “They raided us, so we came to show this is wrong and we’re not scared,” said one of the demonstrators. Or as one placard put it: “We dance together, we fight together.” Notable techno DJs have expressed support for the protests, including Nina Kraviz, the Black Madonna and Spanish producer John Talabot, and a solidarity event was held in Berlin on Saturday night.

But the disturbing finale to the weekend saw the ravers besieged and then evacuated from the city centre under police escort, and the Georgian prime minister making an urgent appeal to the nation for calm.

“This was really so tough, seeing people of my age so full of hate,” said Mariam Murusidze. “If I have to be transported with a bus from a peaceful demonstration to an unknown location for my security, it means that we have a huge problem.”

Before the rightwing militants went on the offensive, Gelbakhiani had expressed optimism about the weekend’s display of youthful solidarity. “The police were showing their power to the young people, but fortunately the young people came out and showed their power, too,” he said. “All of this is not about clubbing and dancing, it’s about values – it’s about the fight for freedom.”

After the extremists struck back, it was clear that this struggle is destined to continue.