For more than a decade, Sara Kemecsei's animal shelter has cared for the stray dogs of the Georgian capital.
By soliciting small donations of US$5 or US$10 apiece, mostly from abroad, she offers shelter and finds new homes for some of an estimated 500,000 neglected animals that wander the streets of the South Caucasus country of 3.7 million.
But under a contentious bill passed by Parliament on Tuesday, her small shelter in Tbilisi's outskirts, which cares for up to 50 canines at a time, could be designated an "agent of foreign influence".
"We are only interested in these dogs, and I challenge anyone to tell me which one of them is a foreign power," said Kemecsei.
The bill on "foreign agents" has sparked a major political crisis in Georgia since the ruling party said in April that it would reintroduce the draft law, which it had shelved last year after protests.
On Tuesday, Parliament voted to override a presidential veto of the bill, setting the stage for it to be signed into law by Parliament's speaker in the coming days.
Thousands have taken to the streets in some of the biggest protests Georgia has seen since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Opposition groups have dubbed the bill "the Russian law", comparing it to similar laws that Russia has used against critics of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.
Western countries have criticised the bill, with the United States threatening to sanction Georgian officials unless it is withdrawn.
The European Union (EU), which gave Georgia candidate status in December, has said it will be an obstacle to talks on Tbilisi joining the bloc.
The Georgian government, which maintains that it wants to join the EU, says that the bill is necessary to protect Georgian sovereignty and promote transparency.
It says Western countries are using the country's non-governmental organisations to drag Georgia into confrontation with Russia.
But on the ground, many NGO workers fear that the law will stop them from providing services that the state fails to offer.
Kemecsei said that the draft law will force her shelter to shoulder large new administrative expenses, while also leaving them vulnerable to fines of 10,000 lari (US$3,700) for mistakes made in paperwork, which she said would likely force the shelter to close down outright.
Kemecsei added: "I find it immoral and unethical that we are doing the government's work for well over a decade now and we are being called foreign agents."
Vazha Kasaraishvili, programme manager at Tanadgoma, an NGO that provides support to drug addicts and HIV patients, says that the law puts his group's work at risk.
He estimates that there are more than 5,000 intravenous drug users in Georgia, with limited state support provided for them.
Kasaraishvili fears that the "foreign agent" designation, which many say is reminiscent of Soviet-era denunciations of spies, will put off the foreign donors who make up the bulk of his financing.
Nino Evgenidze, head of the Economic Policy Research Center think tank, has been a regular attendee at protests against the law, which she fears could shut down her organisation.
"All our parents, grandpas and their parents, they were killed, exiled or jailed under accusations that they were the agents of
foreign influence," Evgenidze said.
* The writer is from Reuters
