Toxic Force

The allegations emerging from Georgia’s 2024-25 protest wave are not merely another chapter in the long, bitter contest between an embattled government and a restless citizenry. They point toward something far more unsettling: the apparent revival of an obsolete First World War-era chemical agent for domestic crowd control. If substantiated, this would represent one of the most serious erosions of global chemical weapons norms in recent years. Through months of demonstrations sparked by the government’s abrupt pause on the country’s EU accession bid, thousands of Georgians gathered outside parliament demanding accountability.

What they encountered, beyond the expected arsenal of water cannon, pepper spray and tear gas, was a burning sensation that clung to their skin and lungs long after the streets had emptied. Some described pain that intensified on contact with water ~ a hallmark far removed from the short-lived irritation characteristic of conventional riot-control agents. Others reported coughing fits, shortness of breath, fatigue, and vomiting that endured for weeks. More troubling still were abnormal cardiac readings detected in dozens of those examined. It is rare for such symptoms to linger. It is rarer still for them to appear across hundreds of individuals with such consistency. That pattern, combined with internal whistleblower testimony and inventories listing chemicals historically linked to camite ~ an agent briefly deployed in the First World War and abandoned in the 1930s ~ raises the possibility that a substance long considered too harmful for use had quietly found its way back into the hands of a police force.

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If this is true, it represents a startling departure from international standards. Modern riot-control agents are allowed precisely because their effects are meant to be immediate, non-lethal and temporary. A chemical that causes multi-week respiratory distress and cannot be washed off the skin with water falls outside any reasonable definition of acceptable policing. It inches disturbingly close to the threshold of chemical weapon use, something explicitly prohibited under international law except in strictly defined, limited contexts. Equally distressing is the institutional response. Instead of clarity, authorities have offered denials and insults, refusing to disclose the composition of the substances used in water cannon and dismissing the growing body of evidence as fantasy. For a country constitutionally committed to European integration, transparency over the coercive power of the state should be non-negotiable.

When citizens raise credible concerns that they may have been exposed to a harmful agent, the burden of proof lies squarely with the government, not with those gasping for breath. The events of 2024-25 in Tbilisi carry a lesson for governments far beyond Georgia’s borders. A lack of oversight in the tools of crowd control creates precisely the conditions in which abuses can flourish. And once a state begins dipping into the chemical arsenals of history, the boundary between policing and warfare becomes dangerously thin. In an era where civil dissent is rising worldwide, protecting that boundary is not just a legal duty, it is a moral one.