Georgian Speaker criticizes German Ambassador's visit to hunger strikers as "diplomatic catastrophe"

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili has criticized Germany’s Ambassador to Georgia, Peter Fischer, following the envoy’s visit to opposition politicians and civil society activists staging a hunger strike on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi.

In a Facebook post, Papuashvili responded to Fischer’s remarks that he had not advised hunger striker Elene Khoshtaria to end her protest, and that his visit was purely to express empathy and solidarity.

“What exactly was the ambassador expressing empathy for? The form of protest — a hunger strike — or the demands being made through this form?” Papuashvili asked. He argued that showing sympathy for a protester threatening self-harm as a means of pressuring others amounts to a “moral catastrophe.”

“It is not moral to approach a person holding a gun to their temple and limit yourself to empathy,” he wrote. “That is the instrumentalization of human life — treating a person’s life as a means to an end, not as an end in itself — a violation of human dignity, which is protected under Article 1 of the German Constitution.”

The Speaker went on to say that if the ambassador’s empathy was directed toward the goal of the protest — namely, Khoshtaria’s appeal to the opposition to boycott local elections — then it represents a “diplomatic catastrophe.”

“Given the ambassador’s recent political activities, this is unfortunately not surprising,” he added.

Papuashvili further cited the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which prohibits foreign diplomats from interfering in the internal affairs of host countries. “This restriction primarily serves to protect the diplomats themselves from reckless and damaging actions,” he wrote.

On June 28, Ambassador Peter Fischer visited hunger-striking opposition figure Elene Khoshtaria and former ruling party MP Gedevan Popkhadze outside the Georgian Parliament. Both are protesting what they describe as political repression and a deterioration of democratic standards under the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Khoshtaria called the ambassador’s visit “an act of solidarity” with the Georgian people, saying Germany and other Western partners “understand that this place is a site of struggle for freedom and European values.”