By Felix Light
TBILISI (Reuters) -Georgia's State Security Service on Wednesday accused the organisers of protests against the government's "foreign agents" bill of seeking to seize power through violence and warned citizens not to get lured into joining them.
Thousands of people have been staging almost daily protests for around a month against the bill, which they say is authoritarian and inspired by similar legislation in Russia that has been used to clamp down on dissent there.
In a statement posted on Facebook (NASDAQ:META), Georgia's internal security agency said the organisers of the protests aimed "to collapse state structures and overthrow the government by violent means".
The agency said the protest organisers were financed from abroad and planned acts of violence against the police, alongside a campaign of civil disobedience that it likened to "colour revolutions", a series of revolts which unseated governments in ex-Soviet republics during the early 2000s.
"We call on young people participating in the protests not to follow provocations," it said in the statement.
Georgia's parliament is expected to hold the third and final reading of the bill on May 13. The opposition has called for a fresh wave of mass protests from May 11.
Western countries have also criticised the draft law, which would require organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as agents of foreign influence.
The European Union, which gave Georgia candidate status in December, has said it could hamper Tbilisi's further integration with the bloc.
The bill has pitted the ruling Georgian Dream party against a coalition of opposition groups, civil society, celebrities and the country's figurehead president.
The government says the law is necessary to promote transparency and to safeguard Georgian sovereignty.
Security forces have repeatedly deployed tear gas, pepper spray and water cannon against the protesters. Last week the leader of Georgia's main opposition party said he was beaten by police at a rally.
In a statement published on Wednesday, parliamentary speaker Shalva Papuashvili said Georgian Dream would begin creating a publicly available database "about all persons who are involved in violence, other illegal actions, threats and blackmails, or publicly endorse such actions".