On December 11, a protest took place in front of the Armenian Embassy in Moscow. Participants demanded that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was attending a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union Council, release persecuted clergy.
Dozens of residents of the village of Adigeni in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region in Georgia, together with Orthodox priests, gathered for a protest. They tried to prevent fellow Muslim villagers from holding Friday prayers.
Ministry of Internal Affairs officers were mobilized on the spot. They called not to violate the law “On Freedom of Assembly”.
A month ago, Friday prayers for Muslims in Adigeni were disrupted after local residents protested against them. The Georgian Muslim Union condemned the persecution of people on ethnic and religious grounds and demanded an investigation into the incident. There is no mosque in the village; on Fridays, Muslims gather in the house of a local resident.
The State Agency for Religious Affairs of Georgia called on Muslim and Christian religious leaders not to succumb to provocations.