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Kmara


Kmara (Georgian: კმარა; "Enough!") was a civic youth resistance movement in Georgia, active in the protests prior to and during the November 2003 Rose Revolution, which toppled down the government of Eduard Shevardnadze. Consciously modeled on the Serbian nongovernmental organization (NGO) Otpor!, which had been instrumental in defeating Slobodan Milošević's regime in 2000, the Kmara members were trained and advised by the influential Georgian NGO Liberty Institute and funded by the United States-based Open Society Institute (OSI). The movement was a hybrid of social movement and virtual NGO, which was highly successful in mobilizing the young Georgians, mostly students, against Shevardnadze's rule. Although Kmara was allied with the opposition parties, especially Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement, its behavior and tactics were nonpartisan, focusing on criticizing corruption and failures of the Shevardnadze regime, rather than promoting any particular politician or political party.

The Kmara movement emerged in April 2003. It was formed by the Georgian student activists which received training by the Serbian Otpor! through the funding of the OSI. The training was focused on sharing the Serbian experience of nonviolent action and Kmara's logo was a near-exact copy of the Otpor's clenched fist.

Kmara organized a loose, decentralized network of the regional cells and employed simple, but effective methods to create a large-scale social movement against the government of Eduard Shevardnadze. Members spray-painted the word "kmara" ("Enough!") on walls, buildings, streets, and elsewhere in even most remote places in Georgia. The slogan was quickly upheld by those who saw the Shevardnadze regime increasingly corrupt and failing. This effort was supplemented by noisy protest marches and aggressive media campaign. According to one of the co-founders of Kmara, Giorgi Kandelaki, "Kmara succeeded in breaking through the public’s political apathy, particularly among young people."


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