Authorities in the country of Georgia deployed camite, a World War I-era chemical agent, against anti-government demonstrators in Tbilisi last year, according to a BBC investigation citing chemical experts and whistleblowers in Georgia's riot police. Camite was used on battlefields and briefly by US police before it was replaced by less-dangerous tear gas in the 1930s. One high-ranking police officer confirmed it was used against Georgian protesters, while an ex-weapons chief, Lasha Shergelashvili, said he knew the government had water cannons loaded with the chemical as recently as 2022. Shergelashvili said he was instructed to test camite in water cannons in 2009 and found it was "probably 10 times" stronger than conventional riot-control agents.
Protesters gathered outside Georgia's parliament last November reported burning skin, coughing, and vomiting that lingered for weeks. Washing only seemed to make the burning worse. A doctor's survey also found evidence of heart abnormalities. The BBC uncovered a 2019 document from Georgia's Special Tasks Department that included directions for mixing two chemicals, "UN1710" and "UN3439," which the BBC identifies as trichloroethylene and camite, respectively.
The Georgian government rejected the findings as "absurd," saying police acted lawfully in response to what it called "brutal criminals." But the findings are enough to have alarmed the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Edwards, who tells the BBC, "This is absolutely in violation of human rights law." While police are allowed to use chemical crowd-control agents in certain cases, they are not to have long-lasting effects. Shergelashvili said his research found you couldn't go near a spot on the ground that had been sprayed with camite for three days, even after the ground was cleaned with water.
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