Several people were arrested when police broke up a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Tuesday morning.
In video filmed by The Associated Press, police can be seen dragging away a number of protesters, while another required medical attention and was transported by paramedics.
Protesters in the Georgian capital vowed on Monday to stay on site 24 hours a day to demand new legislative elections in the country.
The Oct. 26 election kept the ruling Georgian Dream party in power, but opponents say the vote was rigged with Russian help.
Many Georgians view the elections as a referendum on the country’s efforts to join the European Union. Several large protests have taken place since then.
President Salomé Zourabichvili, who rejected the official results, said on Monday she would appeal the vote results to the Constitutional Court. Zourabichvili, who holds a largely ceremonial position, said Georgia was a victim of pressure from Moscow to join the European Union.
Critics have accused the Georgian Dream, created by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia, of becoming increasingly authoritarian and tilting in favor of Moscow.
The party has recently passed laws similar to those used by the Kremlin to suppress free speech and the rights of LGBTQ+ people.
In June, the EU indefinitely suspended Georgia’s membership application process after the country’s parliament passed a law requiring organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to be registered as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power,” similar to a Russian law used to discredit organizations critical of the government.
According to the Central Election Commission, Georgian Dream won around 54% of the vote in October.
Its leaders rejected accusations of electoral fraud made by the opposition. European election observers said the election took place in an atmosphere of “divisiveness” marked by cases of corruption, double voting and physical violence.
