National Unity Day is celebrated in Georgia

In Georgia, April 9 is the Day of Adoption of the Act on Restoration of State Independence of Georgia and the Day of National Unity, Civil Concord and Remembrance of those who died for the Motherland.

April 9 is a day off in Georgia. On this day, the country remembers the victims of the 1989 crackdown on a rally of thousands of people in Tbilisi by the USSR Defense Ministry troops.

Traditionally, on this day Tbilisi residents sprinkle tulips on the stairs leading to the Parliament building in memory of the victims.

On this day, a memorial service will be held in all churches of Georgia. The country's top officials will lay wreaths at the memorial near the Parliament building in Tbilisi.

As a result of the dispersal of the rally 21 people were killed, most of them women. To investigate the events that took place in Tbilisi on April 9, 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR created a commission headed by Anatoly Sobchak. The commission concluded that the military had used excessive force against the demonstrators.

The day of April 9, 1989 became a turning point for Georgia. Exactly two years later, on April 9, 1991, the leader of the national movement Zviad Gamsakhurdia, later President of Georgia, announced the restoration of Georgia's independence on the basis of a national referendum held on March 31, 1991.

During the referendum, the overwhelming majority of the Georgian population voted in favor of declaring the country's independence on the basis of the Act on the Declaration of Independence of the First Republic of Georgia on May 26, 1918.

Reprinted from https://sputnik-georgia.ru/