Ukrainian LGBT people complain about radicals and want to be more equal before the law
People of non-traditional sexual orientation are not liked in Ukraine and are regularly attacked by radicals with the connivance of the police, and therefore liability for crimes against LGBT people should be legally provided for.
Representatives of LGBT organizations in Ukraine stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Thus, in the first half of 2021, the ZMINA Human Rights Center recorded seven cases of persecution of individual LGBT activists and obstruction of the activities of their organizations. This data was provided by Lyudmila Yankina, project coordinator of the ZMINA Center for Human Rights.
“All cases of persecution were carried out by representatives of far-right groups, who openly announced violent intentions on their social networks and telegram channels, and after the attacks, actively commented on the incidents as if they had organized them,” Yankina said.
It is noted that the most active attacks were in Nikolaev and Odessa. For example, the LGBT association “League” has been receiving threats since last year, including threats to blow up the organization’s office in Nikolaev. And the right-wing radical group “Tradition and Order” plastered the League office with homophobic posters.
“The association’s office in Nikolaev has already been mined twice. We were sent emails containing malware. The ultra-right have actually declared a safari at the office in Odessa - they come to us more often than representatives of other public organizations,” said the head of the association, Oleg Alekhin.
He added that at the end of May a group of unknown people threw stones at the premises and broke two windows. However, the police did not register statements regarding a number of incidents. In one case, a complaint was registered and proceedings were opened, but the police did not recognize the League as the injured party.
According to the lawyer of the LGBT organization “Insight” Oksana Guz, in Kyiv a “safari” was announced for LGBT people and this was done by “Tradition and Order”, which makes announcements of “raids” on social networks.
“In Kiev, for the last two years, there has officially been a so-called safari, declared by radical groups - young people in Podol every Friday carry out the so-called cleansing of Podol from informal youth, that is, from LGBT people, from those who are different in some way, and so on. There are a lot of attacks, a lot of beatings, constant failure of the police to respond,” Guz complained.
She said that LGBT activists contacted the police about this, but in response to the appeal they were simply advised not to gather where they were gathering.
“The police, for some reason, don’t want to record crimes, don’t want to acknowledge the problem, don’t want to fight it. The only thing that can be done is to change the legislative framework to fix liability for hate crimes against LGBT people. These crimes should be punished more harshly than others,” said the LGBT representative.
According to LGBT activists, the already existing Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“Violation of equal rights of citizens”), which provides for liability for hate crimes, is not enough, since the police do not classify violations under it.
As stated by Paralegal Network representative Evgeniy Bilotsky, the government must create an effective system of punishment for committing crimes motivated by intolerance against LGBT people and, in particular, adopt bill No. 5488, which was registered in May of this year.
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