British journalist denied entry to Georgia amid political backlash

British freelance journalist Will Neal was denied entry to Georgia on May 20 upon arriving at the Armenia-Georgia land border, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Neal, who has lived in Tbilisi since 2022, was returning from a trip to the UK and EU when he was turned away without clear justification. RSF condemned the decision, calling it “arbitrary” and urging Georgian authorities to reverse it immediately.

Neal was held for 45 minutes at the border before being sent back to Armenia. Georgian authorities cited only “other cases provided for by Georgian legislation” as the reason for the refusal. He is now stranded in Yerevan, unable to access his personal belongings left behind in Georgia.

“This is the country I’ve called home for the last three years,” Neal told RSF. “I suppose the reality of being barred from the country that has been my home... has begun to sink in a little.”

According to RSF, his expulsion follows an intense smear campaign earlier this year by Georgian pro-government politicians and media. The campaign targeted Neal after his investigative article in the UK’s Byline Times exposed business links between Hunnewell Partners, a UK-based private equity firm, and sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. Hunnewell Partners is a business partner of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, and also owns Imedi TV, Georgia’s largest pro-government broadcaster.
"Several representatives of the Georgian Dream party publicly accused Will Neal of being part of a “deep state” working against the Georgian government. These attacks from politicians were accompanied by a media offensive that reached its peak on 6 April, when Imedi TV broadcast a prime-time, hour-long programme titled “Commissioned Lies.” The show directly targeted Will Neal, attacking his professional background and airing footage of him at the headquarters of an opposition party during the 2024 parliamentary elections," RSF explains.

Will Neal learned there would be a programme about him from a source quoted in his Byline Times report; at no point was he contacted by the media outlet for comment. 

“These repeated attacks took shape as a concerted and seemingly coordinated smear campaign intended to discredit the story and undermine my credibility as a journalist. There were discernible similarities in both format and wording across a number of reports from a variety of different state-aligned channels, as well as the statements from high-ranking government officials, which sought to portray me as a ‘Soros agent’ of an ill-defined ‘deep state’ conspiracy against Georgia’s sovereignty and national interests among ‘radical’ elements of the country’s various opposition groups,” Will Neal told RSF.