ILGA Europe has published its latest report in which it warns of violence «increasingly planned«
The attacks against LGTBI people have skyrocketed to levels «without precedents«. He latest ILGA-Europe report, reveals that 2022 was the most violent year for the LGTBI collective in the last decade. The growth of hate speech by «politicians, religious leaders, right-wing organizations and media experts» are, according to the organization, the «root» of that «growing phenomenon of anti-LGBTI speech«.
According to the organization, which brings together more than 700 organizations from 54 countries, in the last year news of murders and suicides of people from the group proliferated throughout the region, «and not only in the countries considered most regressive«. «Attacks with the conscious and deliberate intent to kill and injure have risen to unprecedented levels, including two terror attacks on LGBTI bars in Norway and Slovakia, in which four people died and 22 were injured", details the report.
«We have been saying for years that hate speech in all its forms translates into actual physical violence. This year we have seen that violence is increasingly planned and deadly, generating that people LGBTI feel insecure in countries all over Europe“, warned this Monday the executive director of ILGA-Europe, Evelyne Paradis.
The report concludes that although hate speech and its consequences have reached critical levels, national and local courts "are reacting and prosecutions are increasing in several countries." Also noteworthy is the case of Finland and Spainwhere they were madeenormous efforts» for promoting the legal recognition of gender self-determination, «despite fierce oppositionnot".
ILGA analyzes the situation in Spain
In this sense, the 12th edition of the report indicates that, in Spain, the anti-trans rhetoric continued"gaining ground» in 2022, in reaction to the processing of the trans law, recently approved in the Congress of Deputies. He even points to the moment of tension that was experienced in the Cortes when the PSOE registered its amendments to limit the possibility that minors between 14 and 16 years of age can change their sex on the DNI, "something that civil society condemned."
The document, in fact, goes so far as to recall that «for the first time in history» the manifestation of 8-M, International Women's Day, marched divided into two different routes, depending on whether they supported or rejected gender self-determination (something that will also be repeated this year).
Hate crimes increase by 68%
ILGA Europe also alert that hate crimes continued to be a «serious problemon Spain last year, and refers to data from the Ministry of Interior, who recorded 466 hate crimes in 2021, a historical record and a considerable increase (68%) compared to the 277 documented in 2020. One in four hate crimes was directed at people from the LGTBI collective.
The report mentions some attacks committed over the past year in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona or Bilbao; remember the murder of Samuel Luis in A Coruña; and the appearance of anti-LGTBI graffiti in some towns in the country.
A State Pact against hate speech
Given these conclusions, the LGTBI+ State Federation and other civil society entities have demanded to promote «urgently" a State Pact against hate speech. «We have a law, but hatred will continue to exist and as long as it continues to be fed from public institutions, LGTBI+ people will continue to suffer aggressions and attacks in the streets", sentenced the president of FELGTB, Uge Sangil.
«En Spain, rise of the far right to public institutions has caused, in organizations such as the Congress of Deputies, we have to listen to speeches that we thought were already relegated to past times, such as that there is an alarming increase in cases of homosexuality and transsexuality, as if being LGTBI+ was a disease, a pandemic", denounced this Monday sangil in a statement from the Federation.
