BRATISLAVA, Oct. 27 (DPA/EP) –
More than 50 Human Rights organizations have remembered this Thursday in the streets of the Slovak capital, Bratislava, the victims of a shooting against an LGTBI pub that claimed the lives of at least three people.
The owner of the Teplaren bar where the shooting occurred in October explained during the rally that for years he has been warning about the increase in violence against the LGTBI community. “We have done everything in our power to prevent it from happening, to oppose the systematic efforts of a large part of society that wants to erase us from public space,” he said.
The attack, which took place on the afternoon of October 13, was carried out by a 19-year-old boy identified as Juraj K, who was found dead near the headquarters of the Ministry of Education after committing suicide, as reported the Police.
Two of the deceased were in front of a pub, whose owners described it as a bar “close to the gay community in the center of Bratislava”. Shortly after the attack, the author of the shooting confessed to the crime and, according to the first investigations, took his own life.
Human rights organizations later asked that the two murdered people not be mentioned as men because one of the victims did not identify himself as either a man or a woman. Since then, hate crimes against the LGBTI community have increased in the capital.
Following the pub attack in Bratislava, another event shocked the country when two men were insulted and physically assaulted in broad daylight in a bar next to a luxury hotel for kissing in public, the media reported.
To this was also added a beating against a young man who was brutally beaten in the regional capital of southeastern Slovakia, Nitra, for kissing another young man on a bench. He suffered fractures and facial injuries so severe that he had to undergo surgery at the hospital.
