11 Feb Bulgaria: Attacking or killing gays is not a hate crime
Bulgaria’s efforts to investigate and prosecute hate crime are deemed a failure in a report Amnesty International published today (9 February).
According to the report, the lack of adequate investigation and prosecution created a climate of discrimination, fear and ultimately violence. Some victims of hate crime do not dare to report their experiences to the police because they fear further discrimination.
‘Hundreds of people from minority groups have experienced hate crimes and many more have no confidence in the authorities to protect them,’ said Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s researcher on discrimination in Europe.
Bulgaria has legislation to prosecute crimes motivated by racism and xenophobia but the authorities fail to identify and investigate such crimes.
Hate crimes against LGBTI people do not have any legislation to aid with their prosecution – they are investigated as acts of hooliganism by default.
In a 2013 survey, 86% of Bulgarian LGBTI victims of violence or threats of violence said they had not reported it to the police due to a lack of trust in the authorities.
January 2014 saw the Bulgarian government discuss a new criminal code which would have included sexuality as a prohibited hate motive.
In anticipation of the parliamentary elections in October 2014, the law was shelved.
One of the most prominent cases of the authorities’ failing prosecution of LGBTI hate crimes is the case of 25-year-old medical student Mihail Stoyanov who was brutally killed in Sofia’s Borisova Garden in 2008.
His body was found covered in bruises, from head to toe. He had been beaten until his windpipe broke and he died of suffocation.
The two young male suspects Alexander Georgiev and Radoslav Kirchev were said to be part of a group aiming to ‘cleanse the park of gays’.
Throughout the investigation the crime’s homophobic nature has been well established. Three witnesses, seemingly belonging to the same group ‘cleansing’ the park, acknowledged that they watched the men kill Stoyanov.
The trial for Stoyanov’s death was postponed repeatedly; the trial appears to have started on 28 November 2014, but there is no information available after this date.
Hooliganism and the cruelty of the murder could be aggravating circumstances, leading to a longer sentence should the suspects be tried for murder, but they will not be tried for murder motivated by Mihail’s perceived sexuality.
The police’s attitude raises further concern: One third of the 86% of LGBTI people saying they did not report crimes to the police said they did it out of fear over homo- or transphobic reactions.
Bulgaria’s revised hate crime legislation, turning sexual orientation into motive for hate crime, is still suspended.
Source: Gay star news