Editor’s Note: This article starts a special project called “Journalism of Tolerance” by the Kyiv Post and its affiliated non-profit organization, the Media Development Foundation. The project will cover problems and challenges faced by sexual, ethnic and other minorities in Ukraine. This project is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Internews. The contents are the sole responsibility of Media Development Foundation and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, the United States Government and Internews.
Whenever gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals in Ukraine are vocal about their rights, the response in Ukrainian society still varies from irritation to violence.
In the latest incident, the Equality Festival, which sought to promote the rights of minorities in Lviv, a city 540 kilometers west from Kyiv, was violently interrupted by right-wing radical activists. The anti-gay radicals blocked the festival on March 19, and beat up at least five festival participants.
However, festival organizers somehow attracted more blame for the incident than their attackers. Many said they shouldn’t have raised the LGBT issue during Lent, the fasting season in Orthodox Christianity.
Other critics lashed out at the organizers for damaging Ukraine’s image in the European Union by provoking violence as the Netherlands prepare to vote in a consultative referendum on Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the EU. The referendum is scheduled for April 6.
Such reactions exasperate human rights expert Iryna Fedorovych.
An expert with the civic organization Coalition to Combat the Discrimination, Fedorovych works to persuade people that any day is the right day to fight for human rights, including the rights of the LGBT community.
The passiveness of Ukrainian authorities doesn’t help. Police failed to protect the organizers and participants of the Equality Festival on March 19, according to Olena Shevchenko, the head of Insight, the gay rights group behind the failed festival.
Activists hold posters reading “It’s always a good time for human rights” as they rally near the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv on Nov. 10, demanding that lawmakers adopt anti-discrimination amendments to the labor code.
Violence in Lviv
The festival aimed to bring together representatives of not only LGBT people, but a number of vulnerable groups, including disabled people, internally displaced people, and ethnic minorities.
The problems started early on.
First, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi ignored an invitation to back the event. Moreover, after the Insight activists applied to hold an outdoor event, Lviv’s city administration asked the local courts to ban public events in the city center.
After the organizers decided to move the festival location indoors, several venues turned them down, citing concerns about security.
The organizers then booked rooms and a conference hall in Hotel Lviv. But when they tried to check in to the hotel on March 18, the receptionist said there had been a mistake, and there were no rooms available.
Activists recorded the conversation with the hotel administrator and posted it online. In the recording, the receptionist admits she does not want them to stay at the hotel due to their connection to the LGBT movement. Other hotel employees can be heard calling LGBT people perverts.
Hotel Lviv refused to comment for this story.
Finally, the Hotel Dnister in Lviv agreed to host the festival.
But when the event started on March 19, more than 150 men, their faces hidden by balaclavas and masks, gathered near the hotel, holding rocks and clubs.
They blocked the entrance so that only about 60 of 200 registered participants managed to enter the building.
Shevchenko said it took the police more than an hour to arrive. When they finally turned up at the hotel, an anonymous caller claimed a bomb had been planted at the hotel. The festival was canceled. The police evacuated the participants as the masked men threw rocks at the buses carrying them away.
Later in the day the men hunted down and beat up at least five festival participants.
Lviv police couldn’t tell the Kyiv Post if anyone was arrested following the attacks. In a press release issued after the incident, the police said that they “prevented offenses against the LGBT people.”
Attacks unpunished
The Equality March in Kyiv on June 6 last year also ended in violence. A group of right-wing activists broke through the police cordon and threw smoke grenades and fire crackers at the participants. Two police officers were injured. The march was abandoned in less than 30 minutes.
Both Shevchenko and human rights expert Fedorovych agree that such incidents stir anti-gay sentiments, and make people think that violence against LGBT people is acceptable.
According to the LGBT rights center Nash Mir (Our World), at least 71 people suffered from homophobic attacks in Ukraine in 2015.
Bogdan Globa, an executive director at Fulcrum, a Kyiv-based LGBT rights organization, says at least 150 Ukrainians reported violence against them to his organization in 2015.
The actual numbers are likely much higher. It’s difficult to track attacks on LGBT people as there is no specific article addressing it in Ukraine’s Criminal Code. Another problem, activists say, is that victims often do not report attacks – either because they don’t believe the case will be prosecuted properly, or simply out of fear they won’t be taken seriously by the police.
There are grounds for such fears.
Illya Kiva, head of the drug enforcement department in Ukraine’s National Police, reacted to the Lviv events by posting on Facebook a quote from the Old Testament calling for homosexuality to be punished with death.
National Police spokesman Yaroslav Trakalo told the Kyiv Post that quoting the Bible “is not the same as calling for violence or killing anyone.”
“A personal Facebook page is his (Kiva’s) private business,” the spokesman said.
Kiva later deleted the post from his page.
Some progress
Nick Storchay, 17, is one gay man who didn’t go to the police after an assault.
He lives in Zaporizhia, a city 520 kilometers southeast from Kyiv, but he suffered a homophobic attack in Kyiv after the gay pride march last June. But he didn’t seek redress from the law, as the legal procedures would require visits to the capital, while he wanted to focus on his studies in his last year of high school.
Storchay says most people in Zaporizhia are homophobic, and he often hears obscene comments about his sexuality. Still, he considers himself lucky. His friends support him, and he does not suffer from bullying in school.
Even after the incident in Lviv, Storchay believes that Ukraine has made progress in defending LGBT rights.
One of them was the anti-discrimination amendment to the Labor Code of Ukraine adopted by parliament last fall. It bans discrimination of employees based on various factors, including sexual orientation.
The amendment was demanded by the EU as one of many conditions to be met for Ukraine to obtain a visa-free regime with the union.
For Storchak, the issue of homophobia shows up a mismatch between Ukrainians’ desires for a closer relationship with Europe, while seeking to retain their traditional Ukrainian “values.”
“Ukrainians think of LGBT people only in the context of their European identity, not their Ukrainian one,” Storchay says.
Earlier in March, British Ambassador in Ukraine Judith Gough spoke to online publication BuzzFeed about her life as an openly gay person in an anti-gay country.
Gough has lived in Kyiv with her partner and their two children since 2015. She said she didn’t encounter problems with Ukrainians but did get “quite biting comments” from diplomats from other countries at receptions.
At the same time, Gough said there are frequent attacks on gay people in Ukraine. It is not clear, however, whether the level of homophobic violence has increased or the reporting of violence has increased.
“There have been those who have politicised LGBT issues as a reason for Ukraine not to have a closer relationship with Europe,” Gough told BuzzFeed.
