A police raid on a Dnipro gay club last month has prompted backlash from rights groups, who say the incident highlights problems in how law enforcement authorities treat the LGBT community and underscores the need for reforms to fight homophobia.
In the early hours of April 20, around two dozen law enforcement representatives — some armed and masked — burst into the Potemkin night club and forced people to lie down on the floor, the club’s director, Oleg Rubinstein, said.
“They opened the windows on purpose, it was around five degrees (Celsius) outside, maybe even less, and people lay on the freezing floor for three hours,” he said. “It was torture because people were shaking from the cold and no one was allowed to get up.”
Rubinstein said two people were injured in the raid. Masked officers also allegedly insulted staff and visitors using homophobic slurs, forced a foreigner to yell “glory to Ukraine” and threatened guests.
The officers also photographed and filmed people, threatening to post the images on the internet to prevent people from reporting or talking about the incident, Rubinstein said.
Officers confiscated equipment, laptops, mobile phones and condoms during the raid, but Rubinstein said a number of items and sums of cash that were not listed as confiscated by police went missing.
He added that the condoms were provided to the club by regional and international organizations as part of efforts to combat HIV and AIDS.
Rubinstein said he and a number of others filed complaints with the Sobornе Police Department in Dnipro .
The National Police of Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast released a statement several days after the raid, saying employees of the office for combating crimes related to human trafficking found that the club had been “receiving money to create conditions for patrons to engage in promiscuous sex” since the start of the year.
They claimed that was why the club hosted thematic shows and had “special dark rooms.” Police say they have initiated criminal proceedings under a law against “creating or running brothels and trading in prostitution.”
Rubinstein rejected police claims, saying the venue worked like a regular nightclub during the cold seasons, hosting parties for the LGBT community.
Widespread homophobia
Several local and international groups have condemned the incident and called for an investigation into police conduct during the raid.
The LGBT Human Rights Center Nash Mir said in a statement that it strongly condemned “these obviously homophobic and illegal actions of the police in Dnipro city.”
Oleksandr Zinchenkov, an expert at Nash Mir, told the Kyiv Post that the last large-scale incident like this happened in 2009, when police raided a Kyiv gay club and detained some 80 of its visitors.
“We thought that with the reform of the old (Soviet-style) ‘militsiya’ into the new police force the situation had changed, but it turns out that’s not the case,” he said. “The structures that were created by police for the protection of human rights, both internally and in its work with society, are not working.”
Earlier, Nash Mir also stated that prosecuting the “distribution of pornography” and “running brothels” is an anachronism and an instrument of selective pressure when the matter concerns the voluntary actions of adults.
“In our opinion, this blatant case only underscores the urgent need to implement effective reforms of criminal law, the law enforcement system, and of the consistent fight against manifestations of homophobia in Ukraine,” the rights group said in statement following the attack.
Ukraine has been moving toward greater integration with Europe since the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, but homophobia remains rampant across the country.
Rights groups say attacks on LGBT people and events have been increasing in recent years. In 2018, Nash Mir documented 103 acts that may be described as hate crimes.
Meanwhile, criminal law does not specify sexual orientation and gender identity as grounds on which discrimination and hate crimes are prohibited.
That’s a major obstacle to effective investigation and trial of crimes of intolerance committed on these grounds, according to a recent report ‘Goals For 2019-2020 on the Protection Of Certain Rights Of The LGBTQI Community And Access to Justice.’
Prepared by a number of rights representatives, including those from Nash Mir and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, the report also says police officers don’t always behave properly and professionally when crimes are reported.
“In recent years, representatives of injured parties often encounter such issues as intimidation of victims, use of homophobic vocabulary, disclosure of confidential information, refusal to provide protection or accept a crime report,” it states.
Furthermore, rights groups say that, in recent years, police haven’t always provided adequate protection for LGBT events, including a transgender rights march last November.
Police conduct
Anna Starchevska, the head of communications for the National Police in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, told the Kyiv Post that an internal investigation was being conducted into the raid. However, Nash Mir’s Zinchenkov believes such an investigation will not be effective.
Matthew Schaaf, the director of the Freedom House office in Ukraine, said that while an independent external review is ideal, an in-house investigation by police can be sufficient if it is impartial, takes the complaints seriously and leads to accountability for those responsible, if violations are identified.
“An investigation by officials closely associated with those accused of wrongdoing, such as immediate colleagues, does not meet those standards and may not be perceived as unbiased and impartial,” he said.
Following the incident, Schaaf said the raid in Dnipro served as evidence that “all is not well both in the work of law enforcement authorities and in how they treat the LGBT community” and other marginalized groups.
He said there were a number of issues with the raid, including how it was conducted, according to reports, and police citing the free distribution of condoms as evidence of illegal behavior.
“Ukraine is a country that has a serious HIV problem,” he said. “Handing out condoms or making them available to people is a standard public health practice and criminalizing that… or discouraging that in any way is a serious mistake and it only does damage to public health in the country.”
The United Nations Human Rights Office in Ukraine last month tweeted that they have documented and will follow up on the raid.
“Such conduct of police is unacceptable,” the office tweeted, referring to the reports of police behavior.
The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, ILGA Europe, also criticized the incident.
“The police raid and the shocking revelation of the ‘grounds’ for it demonstrate that it is high time for Ukraine to take concrete measures against bias-motivated violence and anti-LGBTI discrimination,” the organization stated on its website.
