In response to a series of attacks in Kyiv over the past month, the party of President Petro Poroshenko said they support introducing criminal liability for discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals.
“We support safety guarantees for the LGBT community and criminal liability for discrimination based on sexuality,” the party said in a recent letter addressed to the National LGBT Portal of Ukraine.
On Oct. 29 Kyiv’s historic Zhovten cinema was devastated by fire in what authorities believe to be an act or arson. At the time an LGBT themed film was being show as part of the Molodost film festival. On Oct. 31 a group of men in camouflage attempted to force their way into a screening of another LGBT film being shown as part of the festival but were stopped by police.
The film festival’s organizers later said on Facebook that the men were wearing far-right Pravy Sektor insignia though the group itself denied being involved in the attacks.
The state-own Zhovten cinema has been at the center of real-estate development disputes making it unclear whether LGBT issues were the real focus or whether the attacks were a cover for an attempted land grab.
Following the incidents critics said that politicians had failed to keep promises made during the EuroMaidan protests to meet European human rights norms.
“It seems that not everyone understands human rights. Not everyone understand that LGBT rights are human rights and we are not talking about something special for one community,” said the Director of Amnesty International’s Ukraine branch Tetyana Mazur.
The National LGBT Portal of Ukraine received the letter from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc signed by the head of the party secretariat Maksym Savrasov after sending out appeals ahead of the Oct. 26 parliamentary election to all major Ukrainian political parties. In these appeals, they asked whether the parties would support legislation introducing criminal liability for LGBT discrimination.
The Petro Poroshenko Bloc was the only political party to respond to the inquiry, according to the LGBT rights group.
The letter the party sent emphasized that the path to EU membership was also a “tool” for change that allowed implementing “European standards of life” in both economic and social spheres. It did not mention any time frame or specific plans for introducing a bill supporting criminalizing LGBT discrimination in the new Rada, which is expected to convene in December.
A previous attempt to pass a similar law in 2013 failed.
LGBT rights groups experienced a setback in July when Kyiv police asked them not to hold an equality march saying they couldn’t ensure their safety. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko who recently ran as number one on the party list for the Petro Poroshenko Bloc compared the event at the time to a “carnival” and said it was not a time for celebrating.
An LGBT march had taken place the previous year when now ousted President Viktor Yaukovych was still in power.
