Bulgaria: a Bag LGBT center by a far-right candidate to presidential election

Boyan Rasate, at the head of a neonazis group, is a known figure of homophobia in the country. Several parties, as well as eleven ambassadors, condemned this attack, which is not the case of the authorities, remained so far silent.

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Tables and reversed shelves, darling documents, broken material … published photos on Facebook testify to the assault as violent as in short, Saturday, October 30, in the premises of the main LGBT Center of Bulgaria, the Rainbow Hub. Neonazis led by a candidate for the Bulgarian presidential election of November 14, Boyan Rasate, violently bought the small offices located in the heart of the capital, Sofia, where the LGBT defense NGOs (Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender) Bulgarians.

“We were seven people on the occasion of an event with transsexuals when the group infiltrated after ringing at the door,” says Gloria Filipova, 29, project manager of the bilitis association, which was present at the time of this homophobic assault to unprecedented violence. “It was a group of a dozen people. I immediately recognized Boyan Rasate, who struck me before the rest of the group begins to break everything. It lasted less than two minutes”, ensures- t- she. Mr. Rasate would also have threatened with a knife before fling before the arrival of the police.

Guest on a television set, Monday, November 1, Boyan Rasate did not want to answer questions, just talking about “two tables and three pushed shelves” and denounce ” What happens in these associations “that he assimilates to pedophilia.

” Prohibit political parties “

Admirer notorious of the Bulgarian Minister of the 1930s, Hristo Lukov, Mr. Rasate, 50, is the leader of the extreme right microparti Bulgarian-new democracy, which proposes in particular “to prohibit the political parties “. He had already shown violently against the first gay pride organized in Bulgaria in 2008, which had earned him a conviction to follow a re-educational program for six months.

If it is a recognized figure of the homophobic scene, its political audience remains confidential in Bulgaria. It has certainly obtained the 2,500 signatures necessary for its application, but it is not even evaluated by the survey institutes for voting. This attack looks like “a desperate attempt to have a bit of attention,” says M me Filipova, which does not denounce less “the anti-LGBT actions carried out by the far right. of each election “.

Beyond Mr. Rasate’s party, a myriad of extreme right trainings prospered indeed by targeting homosexuals or transgender. As elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, the climate has been hardened in recent years for LGBT associations, especially after the multiple controversies around the Istanbul Convention on violence against women. Never ratified, this text of the Council of Europe had aroused the vivid rejection of the Bulgarian far-right, but also the very conservative socialist party local, because it contains the word “kind”.

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/Media reports.