A man on Thursday attacked the chair of an LGBTQ rights group in Ukraine with pepper spray.
Insight Chair Olena Shevchenko in a Facebook post said the man attacked her in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that is close to the country’s border with Poland, after she and her colleagues had loaded “humanitarian aid for women and children” onto a bus.
Shevchenko said “a guy in dark clothes” approached her on the street while she was talking on her cell phone and asked her a question. Shevchenko wrote the man attacked her with a balloon full of tear gas when she turned around to speak with him.
“I called (the) police and emergency (services),” wrote Shevchenko. “I have chemical injuries to my face and eyes, hands.”
Shevchenko posted pictures to her Facebook page that show her washing the tear gas out of her eyes. Shevchenko also wrote hospital personnel “gave me all the assistance I needed in this case.”
Shevchenko told the Washington Blade the man who attacked her “recognized me.” Shevchenko also said he was Ukrainian.
“I think it was planned,” said Shevchenko.
Shevchenko in her Facebook page wrote she hopes “the police identify him.”
“I am angry and very disappointed,” Shevchenko told the Blade.
Shevchenko on March 10 left her home in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and evacuated to Lviv where she and her colleagues continue to support LGBTQ Ukrainians and others whose Russia’s invasion of the country has displaced.
Helen Globa, co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ Ukrainians, on March 2 used her bicycle to flee the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. Her son, Bogdan Globa, and his husband, Harmilee Cousin, brought her to New York a few days later.
The U.S. is among the countries that have condemned Russia over the atrocities its soldiers committed in Bucha while they occupied it. President Biden this week described the war as genocide.
The U.S. Agency for International Development and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief on Wednesday announced they delivered more than 18 million doses of antiretroviral drugs for Ukrainians with HIV/AIDS.
USAID Administrator Samantha Power posted a picture of the shipment on Twitter. She said it is “part of a broader U.S. effort to maintain continuity of life-saving treatments for chronic illnesses during Russia’s war.”
A USAID spokesperson told the Washington Blade that “USAID delivered the PEPFAR-funded antiretroviral drugs to a Ukrainian non-profit organization that provides health services to people living with HIV.”
“The organization is distributing the antiretroviral drugs to different regions within Ukraine based on need and logistical feasibility,” said the spokesperson.
The spokesperson did not identify the Ukrainian organization that received the drugs.
Helen Globa, co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ Ukrainians, was in her apartment in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha on Feb. 24 when Russia invaded her country.
Globa and her neighbors sought refuge in a makeshift bomb shelter in their apartment building’s basement. Globa’s son, Bogdan Globa, who lives in New York with his husband, Harmilee Cousin, told her to leave on March 2 because her diabetes had caused her health to deteriorate.
Helen Globa rode her bicycle to a bridge that Ukrainian soldiers had blown up in order to stop Russian tanks from using it. Her son’s friend met her on the other side.
“I was afraid of sliding down into the river,” Helen Globa told the Washington Blade on Monday during a telephone interview. “The stress empowered me, and I managed to cross the bridge.”
Helen Globa said Ukrainian soldiers greeted her on the other side of the bridge.
“I was very happy to meet them,” she said. “They were men who you could rely on, who you could trust. I was crying when they instructed me how to behave in case if I heard some shooting or some bullets flying or maybe even some bombings.”
“I was crying,” added Helen Globa. “It was the first time during these seven days because when I was hiding in my basement, I wasn’t able to eat or to think about anything, or cry.”
Her son’s friend drove her to the Hungary-Ukraine border the next day. A man from Munich drove her and two other people to Budapest.
Helen Globa spent the night at a hotel near the Hungarian capital’s main train station. She told the Blade that she was afraid to leave her room, even to get something to eat.
“During those bombing days in Bucha, I guess I acquired some nervous disorder,” said Helen Globa.” Even in Budapest when I was in a safe place, when I was in a quiet place, in the evening I had a strong feeling of fear, unreasonable fear.”
Helen Globa on March 6 flew from Budapest to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and reunited with her son and Cousin.
“I said to them, ‘Guys, you saved my life,’” said Helen Globa.
The Globas and Cousin flew to New York on March 6. Helen Globa is currently living with a PFLAG family in Manhattan.
“I wish to go (back to Ukraine) tomorrow if I could,” she told the Blade. “My heart is with Ukraine.”
“I have a kind of guilt that I am not with them, that I do not have a gun, that I am not fighting, that I am not cooking for Ukrainian soldiers,” added Helen Globa.
From left: Bogdan Globa and his husband, Harmilee Cousin, with Globa’s mother, Helen Globa, in Paris after she fled Ukraine. (Photo courtesy of Bogdan Globa)
Helen Globa is one of the more than 4 million Ukrainians who the U.N. Refugee Agency estimates have fled the country since the war began.
The Biden administration last week announced it would welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the U.S. The White House has indicated it will prioritize LGBTQ people and other vulnerable Ukrainians.
Jessica Stern, the special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ rights abroad, earlier this month told the Blade that she and her office continue to provide support to advocacy groups in Ukraine and in countries that border it. A State Department spokesperson on Tuesday noted to the Blade in response to a request for comment about LGBTQ Ukrainian refugees and reports of transgender women unable to leave the country that “our international organization partners are surging staff to focus exclusively on the protection needs of the most vulnerable fleeing Ukraine.”
“The United States supports Ukrainian organizations that work in Ukraine with vulnerable populations, and where necessary, is supporting efforts to facilitate the ability for many of these vulnerable groups to safely exit Ukraine,” said the spokesperson.
A Russian airstrike in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in the eastern part of the country, on March 1 killed Elvira Schemur, a 21-year-old law student who was a volunteer for Kharkiv Pride and Kyiv Pride. A group of “bandits” on the same day broke into the Kyiv offices of Nash Mir, an LGBTQ rights group, and attacked four activists who were inside.
Helen Globa said one of her group’s members who fled to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that is close to the country’s border with Poland, is volunteering at a shelter for LGBTQ Ukrainians. Other Tergo members have sought refuge in other parts of Ukraine or have left the country.
“People tried to escape to any safe places that they could find,” said Helen Globa.
‘Third World War has started’
Helen Globa throughout the interview praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Zelenskyy is the first president I’m in love with, I’m deeply in love with,” she said.
Zelenskyy last November pledged his country would continue to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity after he met with Biden at the White House. Letters that Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality and Ukraine Caucuses sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken before the war began note that Ukraine in recent years “has made great strides towards securing equality for LGBTQ people within its borders and is a regional leader in LGBTQ rights” that include a ban on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and efforts to protect Pride parades.
Helen Globa told the Blade that she is among the Ukrainians who had previously criticized Zelenskyy, but she added “right now I admire how this person acted, what he said to people, how often he talked to Ukrainians, what he said and how brave he is.”
“He’s a very courageous president,” said Helen Globa. “The whole country is around him.”
She said she supports calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Helen Globa also praised the speech that Biden gave in Warsaw on March 26 in which he said Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
“Biden is pretty sincere and he vocalized his position,” said Helen Globa. “He was absolutely right and I share this opinion that Putin is a criminal and a humanitarian criminal and Putin shouldn’t stay as the leader of the country any more.”
Helen Globa, whose brother and his family live in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, also categorized the war as World War III.
“The administration and Biden should understand and they shouldn’t be like I was at the beginning of the war,” she said. “I didn’t believe the war could start. Biden shouldn’t also lie to himself. The administration shouldn’t also lie to themselves. The Third World War has started.”
LGBTQ immigrant groups welcome decision to terminate Title 42
LGBTQ immigrant rights groups have welcomed the Biden administration’s decision to terminate a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rule that closed the Southern border to most asylum seekers and migrants because of the pandemic.
“It’s about time,” Immigration Equality Executive Director Aaron Morris told the Washington Blade on Monday during a telephone interview. “This was a policy that was difficult to justify during the worst parts of the pandemic.”
The CDC in March 2020 implemented Title 42 in response to the pandemic.
Morris described Title 42 as “the brainchild of Stephen Miller long before COVID-19 even existed” and a “sort of obscure public health law to exclude people from coming to the United States.” Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday formally announced Title 42 will end on May 23.
“Ending the use of Title 42, a racist and harmful policy that was enacted by Trump is a right step for many asylum seekers, especially Black LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers that have been denied entry at the U.S.-Mexico border,” Oluchi Omeoga, co-director of the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, told the Blade on Monday in a statement.
ORAM (Organization of Refuge, Asylum and Migration) Executive Director Steve Roth echoed Omeoga and Morris.
“ORAM is thrilled to see the long-overdue overturning of Title 42, a policy that put asylum seekers in harm’s way in border towns and prevented them from seeking safety in the United States,” Roth told the Blade. “We hope the removal of this policy will speed up the processing of asylum seekers — particularly members of the LGBTIQ community and other vulnerable groups.”
“The use of Title 42, introduced by the Trump administration, effectively eliminated access to legal asylum in our country,” said the Texas Democrat in a statement on March 31, the day before Mayorkas made his announcement. “I have been calling for an end to Title 42 since it began and I am hopeful that the Biden administration will soon rescind it.”
U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) is among the other lawmakers who have also praised the end of Title 42. U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) and others have expressed concerns.
“We are concerned that DHS has not adequately prepared and developed a plan to ensure the safety of migrants, officers and our communities post-Title 42,” said Sinema and Cornyn in a letter they sent to Mayorkas on March 31. “To date, we have not seen sufficient steps to avoid a humanitarian and security crisis. Consistent coordination and communication with state and local governments along the border, including small communities, is one necessary element in a successful strategy to secure the border, protect border communities and ensure migrants are treated fairly and humanely.”
The Republican attorneys general of Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri on Sunday filed a federal lawsuit to block Title 42’s termination.
‘Remain in Mexico’ policy remains in place
The Biden administration has sought to end the Migrant Protection Protocols program that forces asylum seekers to pursue their cases in Mexico, but Morris and others with whom the Blade spoke noted MPP remains in place.
“Ending Title 42 is a step in the right direction, yet at the border we are still concerned about the negative impact MPP reinstatement has upon immigrants who are still returned to Mexico to wait for their hearings,” said Abdiel Echevarría-Cabán, a South Texas-based immigration attorney who is also a human rights law and policy expert.
The murders of at least six LGBTQ men in Colombia’s second largest city since the beginning of the year have sparked concern among advocacy groups.
Hernán Macías López, 30, was found dead in the bathtub of a hotel room in downtown Medellín on March 30. El Espectador, a Colombian newspaper, reported authorities found Macías tied up with signs of strangulation.
Juan Danilo Bedoya Román’s mother on March 15 found him dead in his bedroom in their home in Las Estancias, a neighborhood in Medellín’s Comuna 8. Media reports indicateBedoya, 30, was partially undressed and his feet and hands were tied up when his mother discovered his body.
EgoCity, an LGBTQ magazine, reported relatives on Jan. 27 found Juan David López Álzate’s body inside an apartment in Antonio Nariño, a neighborhood in Medellín’s Comuna 13. Other media reports indicate the 31-year-old was strangled with a belt and was found tied up.
A 36-year-old man who was attacked in downtown Medellín on Feb. 15 survived.
“The victim was stabbed,” reported EgoCity. “He recovered from his injuries after he was brought to a clinic.”
A source in Medellín on Monday told the Washington Blade authorities have described the murders as “isolated events.”
“They have the same pattern,” said the source. “One has to think that they are serial killings and in different neighborhoods in the city.”
Caribe Afirmativo, a Colombian LGBTQ rights group, on April 1 in a series of tweets noted it has confirmed six gay men have been killed in Medellín since the beginning of the year, and each of them “have similar circumstances.”
“It is important that authorities during the investigation do not revictimize the affected LGBTQ community and stigmatize the use of social media to meet and have encounters with other people,” said Caribe Afirmativo.
The U.K. this summer will host a global LGBTQ rights conference that will coincide with London Pride’s 50th anniversary.
The Safe to Be Me Conference will take place in London from June 29-July 1.
The conference will focus on four areas: Fighting violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, expanding legal protections for LGBTQ people, ensuring equal access to HIV/AIDS treatment and other public services and working with businesses to promote LGBTQ-inclusive practices.
“There is a huge enthusiasm for this event, a feeling that it is very timely, that it’s important for like-minded countries to get together … but also to try and bring other countries to the event that are on the journey towards LGBT+ rights and we encourage them to move in the right direction,” said Herbert. “I’m excited about the potential for this event, which I think could do real good.”
The Equal Rights Coalition, a group the U.K. currently co-chairs with Argentina, seeks to promote LGBTQ rights around the world.
Herbert said an Equal Rights Coalition meeting will take place in London on June 28, the day before the conference begins. The London Pride parade will happen on July 2.
Ruling against marriage equality in Bermuda, Cayman Islands ‘difficult’
Herbert spoke with the Blade ahead of the expected introduction of a bill in the British Parliament that would ban so-called conversion therapy in England and Wales. The interview took place less than two weeks after the Privy Council’s Judicial Committee blocked marriage for same-sex couples in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
“I was personally sorry to see that decision, but I respect the fact that it is a decision by a court and we have to respect the legal process,” said Herbert, referring to the March 14 ruling. “Some people have been urging the U.K. government to step in … these are sovereign countries with their own elected parliaments and stepping in to override them would not be a small thing. And you could see it as a form of neocolonialism.”
“It is difficult,” he added. “What they need to do is to work with those countries to try and persuade them to change their own laws.”
‘Situation in Ukraine is deeply worrying’
The conference will begin less than five months after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“The situation in Ukraine is deeply worrying,” said Herbert. “It is appalling to see the impact on people in Ukraine.”
“We need to do everything that we can to help them, and that will include LGBT+ people,” he added. “Where there are special circumstances affecting LGBT+ people, we need to address those and I have been in discussions with other governments and officials about that.”
Herbert told the Blade that “what is happening in Ukraine does mean that we have to reassert our values; which are about the importance of human rights, of democracy, of self-determination.”
“The values that we bring to our conference in June are the same values,” he said. “I do see what we are doing in June is being consistent with the stance we are taking in Ukraine.”
The British government last fall helped evacuate two groups of LGBTQ Afghans from Afghanistan after the Taliban regained control of the country. Herbert told the Blade that “this work continues” with the U.N. and NGOs that include Stonewall in the U.K. and Rainbow Railroad in Canada.
“We continue to work to provide a safe place for LGBT+ refugees from Afghanistan,” he said. “We have a specific program to welcome people who are fleeing the regime in Afghanistan and we’ve identified LGBT+ people as potentially vulnerable who will need our help.”
A gay man who livestreamed an anti-government protest in Cuba last summer has been sentenced to six years in prison.
14ymedio, an independent website founded by Yoani Sánchez, a prominent critic of the Cuban government, reported a court in Havana on March 15 sentenced Yoan de la Cruz. His mother, Maribel Cruz, on Tuesday during an interview with Tremenda Nota, the Washington Blade’s media partner in Cuba, confirmed the sentence.
“This is an injustice,” Maribel Cruz told Tremenda Nota. “What my son did was not worth six years.”
Yoan de la Cruz on July 11, 2021, used Facebook Live to livestream a protest in San Antonio de los Baños, a municipality in Artemisa province that is just west of Havana.
14ymedio reported authorities held De La Cruz “somewhat incommunicado” in a prison in Mayabeque province, which is east of Havana. Maribel Cruz told Tremenda Nota that her son’s health has deteriorated and was worried he would suffer discrimination in prison because of his sexual orientation.
“If they wanted to condemn him, because July 11 hurt them so much, they could have been more benevolent,” Maribel Cruz told Tremenda Nota. “People in that court also have families.”
14ymedio reported De La Cruz is one of 17 San Antonio de los Baños protest participants who the court sentenced to between three and 10 years in prison.
A U.N. committee has found a law that criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual activity in Sri Lanka has violated a lesbian activist’s rights.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on Wednesday published its decision in the case of Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, executive director of Equal Ground, a Sri Lankan LGBTQ rights group.
The decision notes Flamer-Caldera in 1997 “discovered that same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults was a criminal offense under section 365A of the (Sri Lanka) Penal Code of 1883.” The decision further indicates Flamer-Caldera has been “threatened frequently and has faced abuse from the media and the public” since she co-founded a support group for lesbian and bisexual women in 1999.
Flamer-Caldera in 2004 founded Equal Ground.
“She has faced continual challenges running the organization,” reads the decision.
The decision notes the Sri Lanka Police’s Women and Children’s Bureau in December 2012 and January 2013 “made presentations asserting that child abuse was increasing mostly due to the ‘growing homosexual culture.’”
“The author’s picture was shown together with her name and position with Equal Ground, claiming that she and her organization were responsible for spreading homosexuality, implying that they were also responsible for spreading pedophilia,” notes the decision. “She did not complain to the police out of fear of being arrested. The (Sri Lanka Police’s) Criminal Investigation Department has placed her and Equal Ground under surveillance, which forced her to move the organization’s materials to a secure location, as the department had deemed any homosexual material to be pornography, which could provoke arrest.”
The decision further notes the Criminal Investigation Department in July 2013 raided an organization with which Equal Ground works “on the basis of the allegation that it was ‘spreading homosexuality.’” Flamer-Caldera in the complaint she filed with the committee also said a delivery man in the spring of 2018 “verbally abused” her and “threatened” her “with violence.”
“The criminalization of same-sex sexual activity has meant that the discrimination, violence and harassment faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in Sri Lanka continue with impunity,” reads the decision. “Members of the community are not protected against police harassment. The law has altered how she lives and conducts herself in public and private. She has a constant fear of arrest and keeps her door locked and curtains drawn when she is at home with her girlfriend.”
Flamer-Caldera presented her case under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Human Dignity Trust, a London-based NGO that challenges criminalization laws around the world, represented Flamer-Caldera.
“The committee notes that the criminalization of same-sex sexual activity between women in Sri Lanka has meant that the author (Flamer-Caldera) has had difficulties with finding a partner, has to hide her relations and runs the risk of being investigated and prosecuted in this context,” it notes. “The committee therefore finds that the state party has breached the author’s rights under Article 16 of the convention.”
Flamer-Caldera on Thursday welcomed the decision.
“This decision will have an impact on millions of lesbian and bisexual women around the globe,” she told the Washington Blade. “I am happy and proud to have played such a pivotal role in this process.”
Sri Lanka is one of more than 70 countries around the world in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized. The U.K. implemented many of these laws in Commonwealth countries when it colonized them.
Then-British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018 said she “deeply” regrets these colonial-era criminalization laws.
The special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ rights abroad on Friday said she and her office continue to provide support to advocacy groups in Ukraine and in countries that border it.
Jessica Stern told the Washington Blade during a telephone interview that she has held “multiple roundtables” with Ukrainian activists and organizations “to make sure that my office and I both have the relationships and then getting information directly from people on the frontlines.” Stern also noted she has also spoken with LGBTQ rights organizations in Poland, Hungary and other countries that “would be receiving LGBTQI Ukrainian refugees” and regional and international groups “that are closely monitoring and supporting LGBTQI Ukrainians in this incredibly difficult time.”
“The first and most important thing that the U.S. has been doing has been establishing contact with people who are advocating for and servicing LGBTQI Ukrainians, and then in all instances, trying to find ways to support them,” said Stern. “One of the things that’s been really important has been to identify the sort of patterns of human rights abuses, violations and vulnerability that they’re tracking that we need to be aware of.”
Stern said the State Department has “activated” its grant mechanisms to provide financial support to LGBTQ organizations in Ukraine and in surrounding countries.
“One of the things we’ve been focused on has been ensuring that LGBTQI Ukrainian organizations and LGBTQI organizations in the surrounding countries have the financial resources to provide emergency support to this population that finds itself facing double and triple discrimination,” she said.
Stern told the Blade a “top priority” is to ensure that humanitarian assistance to Ukraine “is distributed without discrimination.”
“One of the message that my office has been conveying and with working with others at the State Department to convey is that LGBTQI Ukrainian refugees are at heightened risk and that they should be supported and that anyone providing humanitarian assistance should actually be on the watch for instances of discrimination or violence they may be subjected to.”
Stern said her office has not received “too many stories of (discrimination) incidents, but we have to been able to sound the alarm.”
“The institutions and partners, we work with have been taking that seriously,” she said.
Russian airstrike kills Kharkiv activist
Stern spoke with the Blade less than a month after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
A Russian airstrike in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that is less than 30 miles from the Russian border in the eastern part of the country, on March 1 killed Elvira Schemur, a 21-year-old law student who was a volunteer for Kharkiv Pride and Kyiv Pride. A group of “bandits” on the same day broke into the Kyiv offices of Nash Mir, an LGBTQ rights group, and attacked four activists who were inside.
“The case of Nash Mir was really horrific and really demonstrated the kind of opportunistic violence that LGBTQI persons, human rights defenders and organizations can be subject to right now by both state and non-state actors,” said Stern.
Stern told the Blade that activists have also said many transgender and gender non-conforming Ukrainians have decided to remain in the country because they cannot exempt themselves from military conscription.
“What I’ve been told is that many trans and gender non-conforming Ukrainians are sheltering in place, and even in some cases staying in places where they are at risk of being attacked by missiles and bombs and definitely in harm’s way simply because they’re concerned that they don’t have a way of being exempted from military conscription,” she said.
Stern cited the case of a trans man who tried to leave Ukraine and “in an effort to prove who he was who he said he was, he was actually forced to remove his shirt and show his chest” at the border.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the only humiliating and potentially violent incident that I’m hearing us,” she said.
Stern expressed concern about safety of gay men who are conscripted into the Ukrainian armed forces. Stern also noted “all women are at risk in times of war and conflict.”
“There’s absolutely a concern about the safety and well-being of lesbian and bisexual and trans and intersex women,” she said.
Challenges for LGBTQ Ukrainians ‘will be enormous’
Stern told the Blade the State Department is “working to provide as much support as possible for all Ukrainians that want to leave the country.”
She noted many LGBTQ activists in Ukraine with whom she spoke immediately after the invasion began said they did not want to leave. Stern acknowledged some of them have now fled the country.
“The invasion has just been so violent that even the most committed activists that people we both know have had to change their strategy,” said Stern. “So, in every instance where I’m hearing of an individual or a group that is at risk and wants to leave, we’re doing everything we can to help give them the support they need.”
“Most people do not become refugees,” she added. “You know, most people cannot leave … the global community should do everything we possibly can to affirm the human rights and provide support for Ukrainian refugees.”
President Biden shortly after he took office issued a memorandum that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ rights around the world.
Letters that Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality and Ukraine Caucuses sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the eve of the invasion noted Ukraine in recent years “has made great strides towards securing equality for LGBTQ people within its borders and is a regional leader in LGBTQ rights.” These advances include a ban on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and efforts to protect Pride parades.
Stern reiterated the challenges for LGBTQ people inside Ukraine “will be enormous” as the conflict drags on.
“In all war and conflict, anyone who is vulnerable and vulnerable before the conflict remains at heightened risk and even becomes at greater risk,” she said. “Where people have access to weapons and LGBTQI people are unsafe. In a context where the rule of law is weak, LGBTQI people are at risk as the Nash Mir case showed us immediately.”
“I’m very worried that discrimination and violence will rise for LGBTQI people in Ukraine,” added Stern. “I’m extremely concerned that the track record from the Russian government on these issues is a harbinger of danger for LGBTQI Ukrainians in Russian occupied parts of the country.”
The head of an LGBTQ rights group in Ukraine has fled the country’s capital.
Insight Chair Olena Shevchenko on March 10 left her home in Kyiv and evacuated to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that is close to the country’s border with Poland.
Shevchenko on Tuesday told the Washington Blade that she fled Kyiv because of the “bombings, the absence of working possibilities, medicines and some food as well.” Shevchenko said she continues to work to help LGBTQ Ukrainians who remain trapped in Kyiv and in other cities that Russian forces continue to attack.
“(It’s) pretty hard,” Shevchenko told the Blade. “I think I’m almost at my limits.”
Shevchenko wrote an op-ed that the Blade published on Feb. 24, the same day that Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
“Our activists from the LGBTQI+ communities are staying and keep working, providing support to the most marginalized ones,” wrote Shevchenko. “Honestly, I don’t know how long we will be able to resist, but we will do our best for sure.”
Shevchenko in her op-ed acknowledged concerns that Russia may target LGBTQ Ukrainians and other groups if it were to gain control of the country.
Magomed Tushayev, a Chechen warlord who played a role in the anti-LGBTQ crackdown in his homeland, died on Feb. 26 during a skirmish with the Ukrainian military’s elite Alpha Group outside of Kyiv. A White House official the day earlier told the Blade that the Biden administration has “engaged directly” with LGBTQ Ukrainians and other vulnerable populations.
Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrewski and Oleksandra Kuvshynova, his Ukrainian colleague, died on Monday outside of Kyiv when their vehicle was attacked. The same incident left Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall injured.
Brent Renaud, an American journalist and filmmaker, died in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin on Sunday after Russian forces attacked his car and shot him in the head. The New York Times reported the same attack left Juan Arredondo, a photographer and professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, injured.
LGBTQ groups continue to raise funds for Ukraine counterparts
Shevchenko on Tuesday told the Blade that Insight has raised $51,000 since the invasion began.
OutRight Action International on its website says the fund it launched to support LGBTQ rights groups in Ukraine has raised more than $525,000.
Pride organizations across Europe have donated $54,862.45 (€50,000) to Ukrainian advocacy organizations. Prague Pride has worked with Alturi, a group that promotes global engagement on LGBTQ issues, to raise more than $12,000 to support groups inside Ukraine and to provide assistance to LGBTQ Ukrainians who reach the Czech Republic.
“While the situation is grim we can offer hope to our LGBTI family in Ukraine,” says Alturi on its website.
