Police broke up five-day-long demonstrations against President Mikheil Saakashvili on early Wednesday. Three people were arrested during the operation, and local TV stations reported that their journalists had been beaten and their cameras confiscated.
A short while later, several hundred demonstrators moved back towards parliament. However, police in cars again forced the demonstrators back, arresting two people.
Georgian TV earlier showed footage of Giorgy Khaindrava, an ex-Cabinet minister and an opposition leader, being arrested.
Speaking in front of parliament on Wednesday, opposition leader, Zviad Dzidziguri, said, "By their actions this morning, the authorities have shown their true colors. It is the duty of all Georgians to come out onto the streets".
Georgian MP Levan Gachechiladze, who had been taking part in a hunger strike outside parliament, said that he had been beaten by police, but that "the people will soon beat Saakashvili in the same manner".
The Georgian opposition is demanding, aside from Saakashvili's resignation, early elections in April 2008, electoral reform, and the freeing of "political prisoners".
At the peak of the protests, between 50,000 and 100,000 people, according to different estimates, rallied on Friday, the first day of Georgia's worst unrest since the 2003 "rose revolution" that brought Saakashvili to power.
