On 11 December 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment in the landmark case of Tsaava and Others v Georgia, finding violations of Articles 3, 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case concerned Georgian authorities’ dispersal of a protest in front of the Parliament building in Tbilisi on the night of 20–21 June 2019 and the adequacy of criminal investigations into their conduct.
The protest had been held in response to a member of the Russian Duma sitting in the Speaker’s chair in the Georgian Parliament and delivering a speech in Russian as part of a session of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy. The applicants had been participants in, or journalists reporting on, the protest. All of them had been injured as a result of the authorities’ dispersal of the protest.
In May 2024, the Court’s Fifth Section had found a violation of the procedural limb of Article 3 (prohibition against torture, and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment). However, it refrained from deciding on the merits of the complaints under the substantive limb of Article 3, as well as the admissibility or merits of the complaints under Article 10 (freedom of expression) and Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association). The case was referred to the Grand Chamber.
In its judgment, the Grand Chamber held that the Georgian authorities had used excessive force against participants in and journalists reporting on the protest. It found that there had been a violation of the substantive limb of Article 3 in light of the injuries caused by kinetic impact projectiles and other physical ill-treatment. It gave particular attention to the minimum requirements of a State’s regulation and use of kinetic impact projectiles in crowd management, drawing on the Court’s existing jurisprudence on less-lethal weapons.
The Grand Chamber also found a violation of the procedural limb of Article 3, given the authorities’ failure to carry out an effective criminal investigation into the authorities’ conduct, as well as a violation of Article 11 arising from the authorities’ use of force in dispersing the protest.
The case is particularly notable for its findings on Article 10. The Grand Chamber emphasised that Contracting States are under a positive obligation to have in place an effective system for the protection of journalists during protests, who are acting in their public “watchdog” role. It found that the use of force by firing kinetic impact projectiles against the applicant journalists and removing an applicant journalist from the Parliament building’s courtyard were neither necessary nor proportionate.
Naomi Hart acted for PEN Georgia, PEN International and English PEN as third-party interveners, led by Can Yeginsu of Three Verulam Buildings. The interveners’ submissions were expressly cited in the Court’s analysis in relation to Article 10.
