It's Saturday night in Tbilisi. A crowd is gathering outside the city's State Concert Hall, chatting among themselves. For some, the gathering offers a brief respite from the exhaustion of prolonged demonstration. For others, it is an act of defiance against a government that opposition figures, Western observers and many Georgians say is illegitimate.

A marching band strikes up, signalling the march to begin. The crowd steps off the pavement and onto the road, bringing traffic to a halt. Several women move to the front, each carrying a photograph. The faces in the images belong to some of Georgia's more than 118 political prisoners, people convicted on charges ranging from protest activity to drug offences to espionage since Georgian Dream came to power in elections that have been widely disputed. The women carrying the photographs are their mothers, a group that has come to be known as the Mothers of Conscience.

The crowd slowly marches down Rustaveli Avenue, growing in size as it does. By the time we are outside parliament, the numbers have reached 800 or so. Tonight is a technical violation of new laws that prohibit blocking the road and pavement. The only way to get around it is to request police permission – which puts protestors in an awkward spot: to ask permission from an authority they don't recognise.

"This is a resistance," 36-year-old Guram Chukhrukidze told bne IntelliNews. "We are not complying with the stupid laws they adopt."

After more than a year of continuous protests, sparked by a disputed election in which Georgian Dream claimed victory despite widespread allegations of fraud, many faces in the crowd have grown familiar.

Sustaining hope

But beneath the conversational mood lies a real paradox: how to sustain hope as new authoritarian legislation is continuously pushed through. Georgian Dream has severely cracked down on the right to protest, freedom of speech and political pluralism. Opposition leaders and protesters have faced new charges ranging from drug offences to espionage. So far, the impact of international sanctions has remained limited; Georgia still has one of the region's fastest-growing economies.

As of March 20, Georgians are on their 478th consecutive day of pro-European protest. Many demonstrators say these protests are the last thing preventing Georgian Dream from presenting itself as a democracy.

"The main source of the government's illegitimacy is this," said Chukhrukidze gesturing toward the crowd gathered outside parliament on March 7.

"They adopted this new law which says that we are obliged to ask to protest. Whenever we want to go and protest, we have to apply first to the police. But actually… this law is against the constitution of Georgia."

Since Georgian Dream was elected, newly introduced laws mean that first-time offences including concealing your face to evade facial recognition, or blocking the road or pavement, can be punished with up to 15 days of immediate detention.

Protests have also adapted in response to these laws. Numbers are smaller and actions are less disruptive; there is no longer tear gas, the use of lasers or a heavy police presence.

"We want to avoid escalation," said Chukhrukidze. "One of the main values of our protest is that we are fully peaceful."

Political legacy 

But for some, continuing to show up is becoming harder as hope grows scarcer. Weekday protests are noticeably smaller than Saturdays as the energy required to continuously show up wanes.

What motivates those who continue to show up is not only the desire for a democratic Georgia, but also the memory of everything they have already endured in its name.

"I personally don't have hope and I don't live in illusions," said 51-year-old Ioska Jandieri, a former political prisoner under ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. Jandieri was sentenced to eight years for burning his state documents outside parliament in 2007, in protest against a prior election widely suspected of being rigged. The protests that followed contributed to one of the most significant democratic upheavals in the country's history, the Rose Revolution.

"Still, I might be wrong. I'm an ordinary mortal person," said Jandieri. "Maybe today I feel no hope and yet tomorrow the regime could collapse on its own, like what happened with [former Venezuelan president Nicolás] Maduro, for example," he said.

In spite of his fading hope, Jandieri can easily count the number of days he has missed the protests: seven when he was arrested, and four when he had a virus.

"I am a patriot of my country, and I feel obliged to stand on the right side of history every day and to come out and fight for the democracy of my country," he said.

Mothers of Conscience

Tsaro Oshmakashvili, 62, is another dedicated protester who comes to Rustaveli each night. She has taken it upon herself to campaign on behalf of one of over a hundred Georgians imprisoned for political reasons since 2024.

Oshmakashvili met Archil Museliantsi, 30, a political prisoner who has been an orphan since childhood, on Rustaveli Avenue at the height of the protests. At the time, Museliantsi told Oshmakashvili he was ready to die for his country.

He was later arrested and sentenced to four years in prison for setting fire to one of the CCTV cameras the government uses to identify protesters through facial recognition. The video used to convict him does not clearly show his face, and the footage is widely believed to have been spliced together.

Since his arrest, Oshmakashvili has dedicated herself to campaigning for his release alongside the Mothers of Conscience, a group representing the mothers of Georgia's political prisoners, bringing him supplies in Gldani prison, and keeping his name in the public eye.

Despite her near-nightly presence outside parliament, Oshmakashvili also finds herself struggling with hopelessness.

"Lately my mood has been a bit heavy. To say it directly, I feel tired and not in a very good emotional state," she told bne IntelliNews on March 11.

"First, Archil and the boys are in prison, and they absolutely must be released. That gives me the motivation to keep fighting… [but] sometimes a sense of hopelessness comes over me, thinking that it may take a very, very long time."

Camping out 

Darejan Tskhvitaria, 68, has sacrificed a great deal to sustain the protests. When bne IntelliNews visited her on March 11, she had been living in a makeshift tent set up outside parliament for the past 13 months, sleeping on a mattress placed on wooden crates beneath a tarpaulin roof.

"Every day, I go over to the Gallery-Museum to use the toilet and tidy myself up. I bring a bottle of water and wash there. Three times a week, I leave for an hour to go to my cousin's house to bathe, and then I come straight back here."

"This sacrifice is worth it to ensure the protest on Rustaveli never stops. It's worth it for that. Girls used to tell me, 'Darejan, it's so cold, I can't go out,' but then they would say, 'I remembered you, a woman sitting there 24 hours a day, and I told myself I had no right to stay home.'"

That same night, Tskhvitaria was forcibly evicted from her tent after a fire broke out in a neighbouring protester's tent, which was quickly extinguished. Police arrived at the scene, confiscated her phone, and took her to the station.

After four hours, Tskhvitaria was released and her phone was returned, but she found that all her contacts had been deleted. When she arrived back at parliament, her possessions and tent had been removed.

Tskhvitaria says she plans to continue her protest regardless.

"They will probably allow me to set up a tent again, I don't know. But with or without it, I am going to stay here. Last winter I didn't have a tent, but I spent nights here on the concrete. I will continue being here," she told OC Media.

Tskhvitaria also has a personal reason to keep going: her seven-year-old son was poisoned on April 9, 1989, and died seven months later. 

"I've been fighting and involved in activism my entire life. I've fought injustice forever; this is nothing new to me," she told bne IntelliNews.

"If I didn't have hope, I certainly couldn't stay here like this. Hope for the future and faith are what keep me here; they give me the will to fight, because we are right."

"No state has granted legitimacy to this 'pseudo-government' that has seized power. That is a huge trump card for us. We will fight, Europe will help, and we will send them packing."

"A government that supports the Iranian dictatorship and kills its own people has no future. I want to say a huge thank you to Britain for sanctioning these propaganda media outlets, Imedi and POSTV. Their resources will slowly dry up because they won't be able to run ads, and the propaganda will decrease," she said.

Absent youth

Another new feature of the protests is the noticeable absence of young people, many of whom previously endured arrest, severe police brutality, tear gas, and the onslaught of police water cannons during the immediate fallout of the contentious election in November and December 2024. The BBC later reported that these cannons were laced with toxic chemicals.

"Most of the students who were previously active have decided to step back," 22-year-old Sergey Kacheli told bne IntelliNews. "Students are avoiding the protests and withholding their solidarity because of the sheer scale of the crackdown, the ongoing oppression, and the harsh new laws regarding custody."

A report published on March 12 under the OSCE's Moscow Mechanism found clear evidence of democratic backsliding in Georgia, pointing to a pattern of violence and abuse against protesters, journalists, and opposition figures, alongside near-total impunity for those responsible. It warned that efforts to ban the main opposition parties pose a direct threat to political pluralism, and highlighted repressive protest laws, worsening press freedom, and a legislative "chilling effect" driving journalists toward self-censorship.

The report called for the release of political prisoners, new elections under international observation, an end to attempts to outlaw opposition parties, and sanctions against Georgian officials. The government, however, dismissed the findings as politically biased and factually flawed, leaving those on the streets to continue their protests in a standoff over the country's democratic future.