Did Georgia use a World War I chemical weapon on protesters last year? That’s what a recent BBC investigation is claiming, and honestly, the details are pretty alarming.
So, here’s what happened. The BBC says it found evidence that the Georgian government used a chemical agent called Camite something first deployed in World War I against protesters in Tbilisi last year.
Georgia Accused of Deploying Chemical Agent on Protesters
This came at a time when thousands of Georgians took to the streets, furious after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced the country would stop trying to join the European Union. The decision hit a nerve. More than 80 percent of Georgians say they want to join the EU, but the government slammed the brakes after the European Parliament refused to recognise Georgia’s 2024 election results.
That election was a mess. The pro-Russian Georgian Dream party, led by Kobakhidze, claimed victory with 54 percent of the vote. But the opposition and a bunch of international observers people from the European Parliament, NATO, the OSCE, you name it said the whole thing looked rigged. Kobakhidze, who’s pretty tight with Moscow, accused the EU of blackmail and declared Georgia was done with EU membership talks. That move sparked a wave of protests, especially in Tbilisi.
Inside Georgia’s Chemical Weapon Scandal
Now, back to the chemical weapon. According to the BBC, riot police used water cannons filled with Camite. They dug up an internal police inventory that listed two unmarked chemicals: trichloroethylene and UN3439. The latter includes bromobenzyl cyanide, better known as Camite.
Back in World War I, French forces used Camite for riot control, but it was quickly abandoned once they realized how long the effects lasted. International law says any chemical used for crowd control should only cause temporary symptoms—nothing that sticks around.
But in Georgia, whistleblowers from the Special Tasks Department and riot police said they’d actually tested Camite internally back in 2009. Lasha Shergelashvili, a former weapons chief, told the BBC that Camite was “probably ten times stronger” than regular tear gas.
He said, “We noticed the effect was not wearing off. Even after washing with water or baking soda, we still couldn’t breathe freely.” Shergelashvili warned against using it, but apparently, police kept loading it into water cannons at least through 2022.
Georgia’s Political Meltdown
The effects on the ground were nasty. Dr. Konstantine Chakhunashvili, who both studied and experienced the aftermath, interviewed nearly 350 protesters. He found that about half suffered long-term damage months of coughing, trouble breathing, and skin irritation.
Some even developed lung and heart issues. His study, which is set to be published in Toxicology Reports, backs up what protesters described. One man said his facial skin peeled for “at least a month,” and the water “didn’t only get you wet, it also burned your skin.”
Experts weighed in too. Professor Christopher Holstege from the University of Virginia said the symptoms lined up with Camite exposure. Dr. Alice Jill Edwards, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, went further, calling it an “experimental weapon” that broke human rights law.
The Georgian government, for its part, has called all of this “absurd” and “frivolous.” The ruling party insists police followed the law while dealing with what they call “brutal criminals.”
But protests haven’t stopped. Critics say the government is sliding toward dictatorship, pointing out that many opposition leaders are now jailed, in exile, or under criminal charges.
The Georgian Dream party, meanwhile, claims it’s protecting the country from opposition figures plotting a power grab and dragging Georgia into a disastrous war with Russia.
It’s a tense situation, and the questions around Camite just add more fuel to the fire.
