On 26 June, the Georgian parliament held an emergency meeting to discuss the stripping of immunities of the parliamentary member Nika Melia.

The Chief Prosecutors Office has requested the parliament of Georgia to lift immunity from Melia, charging him for inciting and heading mass violence on the night of 20-21 June on Rustaveli Avenue. For that reason the Procedural and Legal Issues Committees in the Georgian parliament has gathered in order to discuss the possible stripping of Melia’s immunity. According to the Georgian law, the immunity of a Georgian parliamentary member prohibits the law enforcement to search or detain a member of parliament without the permit of Georgia’s main legislative body. If stripped from his MP immunities and if proven guilty, Melia could face between six and nine years in prison.

Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze was also present at the session of the two committees. According to him, the opposition should be solely blamed for the clashes between the protesters and law enforcement officers in Tbilisi on 20-21 June. “The developments we saw on Rustaveli came after the provocations of opposition members. Giving a legal assessment is the duty of the Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office, which started the investigation. As for the political evaluation, I can once again state, that it was a deliberate provocation by the opposition which caused what we have seen,” he said.

Melia himself said that the accusations from the Prosecutors Office are a political prosecution. “None of the citizen of the country should be charged for protesting the occupation and the presence of Russian MPs in the Georgian parliament. What is going on in the country is based on the wishes of a single person - Bidzina Ivanishvili” he said. Melia was backed by the opposition in the Georgian parliament which said that the evidence sent by the Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office is not sufficient for his detention.

Nika Melia is a parliamentary member of the United National Movement (UNM) political party. The UNM was founded in 2001 by the former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili. He played a major role in prompting the “Rose Revolution”. It is considered a centre-right party that favors closer ties with NATO and the European Union, as well as the restoration of Tbilisi's control over the separatist self-proclaimed states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. After the elections in 2016, the party faced an internal conflict between the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Davit Bakradze, former Mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugulava and Saakashvili himself, resulting in a major split in 2017. As a result of the split, a majority of the UNM's electoral list defected to European Georgia, leaving the UNM with only six members in parliament down from the original 27.