(Bloomberg) -- Georgia’s ruling party said it’s reviving a draft law targeting “foreign agents” that triggered violent clashes between police and protesters last year and evoked comparisons to a measure Russia uses to suppress critics.

The Georgian Dream party said the legislation, which drew strong criticism from the US and the European Union, aimed to force non-governmental organizations to disclose their sources of funding. It accused civil society groups of “supporting extremism,” including ones backed by US and European foundations.

NGOs are involved “in the dissemination of pseudo-liberal ideology and so-called LGBT propaganda” as well as “in campaigns that aim to undermine public trust in the Georgian Orthodox Church,” the party said Wednesday in a statement on Facebook. “None of their financiers have taken responsibility for the above-mentioned anti-state actions and the radical agenda of wealthy NGOs.”

The law provoked a public split between President Salome Zourabichvili and the party founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man, when it was first proposed in March last year. The US and the EU likened the measure to one Russian President Vladimir Putin uses to crush domestic dissent. 

Zourabichvili backed thousands of protesters in the capital, Tbilisi, who forced Georgian Dream to withdraw the law after a night of violence in which riot police fired tear gas and used water cannon. She said the law threatened Georgia’s bid to join the EU, which granted candidate status to the Caucasus nation in December.

The original measure threatened fines and imprisonment for as long as five years to organizations or individuals who received at least 20% of their income from abroad and failed to register with the government as an “agent of foreign influence.”

The revised law will retain the same text though the “foreign agent” term will be replaced by “organization pursuing the interests of a foreign power,” Mamuka Mdinaradze, leader of Georgian Dream’s parliamentary faction, told reporters.

Opposition groups vowed to fight against the law again. 

“It’s a war on the Western community,” Roman Gotsiridze, an opposition member of parliament, said by phone. The government wants to have the measure in place as a tool for use before October’s parliamentary elections, he said. 

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