An open event organized by Samara social LGBT-movement “Avers” took place on April 6 for the first time this year. Participants of the event named “Death Angels” told Samara residents about the violence LGBT people experience in Samara region. As well as the year before “Death Angels” are people wearing blood-stained clothes who represent unpunished violence against this social group. The Angels provided passers-by with local monitoring results by handing out leaflets.
The data featured not all cases but only those the activists knew about. There is no real statistics as the police do not want to consider these crimes to be hate crimes. They draw the curtain over the fact that these crimes were motivated by homophobia and, as a rule, they call these crimes “domestic” ones and “crimes committed on the basis of abrupt hatred of the victim” and refuse to initiate proceedings.
A press-release from the “Avers” group particularly says:
Do people want their rights to life and freedom to be protected? Of course they do. Do they expect law enforcement authorities to protect them? They possibly do. Do LGBT people receive this protection? They rather do not. Broken bones and frontal bone fissures, rapes, robbery, intimidation and threatening are not crimes homophobes are punished for anymore. Murders are considered without taking into account aggravating circumstances and punishment for them is minimal.
In Russia there are 5-7 % of those who consider themselves to be a part of this social group. That makes 7-10 million people and these people do not live in reservations. They work, study and live among the rest of the people. That means that each Russian definitely has at least one LGBT friend, colleague or just a person they know. But this person is afraid to come out as they do not believe in people’s kindness and understanding. They watch TV and get afraid even more than ever before. By what? By your reaction, your words or silence, your actions on the one side and police inactivity, aggressive homophobic policy pursued by the government, by discrimination acts taking place at work and Universities.
And what if you have such a friend? Do you want them to die? Hopefully you do not.
Many straight people helped the “Avers” to organize this event. One of them even decided to put on blood-stained clothes. Over 50 Samara residents got acquainted with statistics presenting cases of violence against LGBT people in Samara region today. Organizerso thank all those who carefully read the leaflets and asked for a couple of additional ones to tell their friends about this problem.
Source – Queer Russia
