LGBTI people in Europe face an increasingly toxic and violent environment, new reports warns
euronews.comReleased on Monday morning, the study shows the steepest rise in anti-LGBTI violence since the organisation began publishing its annual report 12 years ago.The trends in 2022 present not only a marked increase in the number of attacks but especially in the severity and lethality with which they were conducted, such as the shootings in Bratislava and in Oslo, where the attackers were said to have purposely targeted queer people."It's deliberate attacks with a wish to kill," says Evelyne Paradis, executive director at ILGA-Europe.The report pays no mind to the traditional West-East divide and instead points the finger at a long list of European countries where anti-LGBTI hate crimes are "on the rise," including France, Hungary, Germany, Montenegro, Iceland, Romania, Spain, Turkey, Switzerland and Russia.The reasons behind this violence are multi-fold and vary from country to country but they all can be traced back to one common pattern: hateful rhetoric."There’s a rise in hate speech – and hate speech often by politicians, by elected officials, by key opinion leaders and, dare I say, also hate speech that has been allowed to be disseminated by the media as well," Paradis told Euronews in an interview."Hateful speech always has an impact.
It always translates, at one point or another, into physical violence, because it does contribute to creating a climate where physical violence is enabled."In a positive evolution, the report notes this rise in hate crime has been met with a rise in successful prosecutions as European courts become more responsive to bias-motivated violence.However, the legal cases take place only "after the fact" and have little bearing in the prevention of the violence itself, Paradis said, which is the.
