On October 30th five LGBT activists were attacked by a group of 8 people in the city of Tomsk, Russia shortly after they started a peaceful awareness-raising action against homophobia. The action was organised in the afternoon at one of the city’s central squares.

The attackers’ faces were hidden under white-and-green scarves which are typical for the fans of a local football club. Out of 5 participants of the action (4 young men and a young woman) only the woman was not injured. The others were kicked to the ground and beaten by the feet with shouts “beat the faggots!”. After one of the activists managed to escape and run towards a post of the police (situated 20 meters away from the place of incident), the attackers disappeared from the scene. The police did not intervene into the incident, they only called the ambulance.

As a result of the incident three activists got brain concussion and numerous injuries of the body. One of them is still in the hospital in a grave condition: he hardly speaks and has grave injuries of the face.

The same evening two of the victims reported the incident to the police. The third can’t do this due to his physical condition. The criminal case was not opened yet, but the police interviewed the victims and a witness, who stated that he saw the attackers coming to the square before the scheduled time of the action.

All the victims are activists of the regional branch of the Russian LGBT network (http://lgbtnet.ru) and for more than a year openly act against human rights violations of LGBT people in the Tomsk region. One of them is also individual correspondent of the Youth Human Rights Movement (http://yhrm.org).

The action on October 30th was entitled “Ribbon of friendship” and supposed disseminating leaflets with quotations of the famous people about homophobia and rainbow ribbons to pedestrians. It was announced mainly to LGBT audience via the social network VKontakte.ru and the regional LGBT web-portal GayTomsk.ru.

We consider this attack not only as an obvious hate incident, but also as an act of intimidation of activists carrying out legitimate human rights activities. The law enforcement bodies should carry out an effective investigation of this incident, as well as ensure physical safety of the victims who now risk being further targeted. The inaction of the police officers present near the place of the incident should also be scrutinized.

YHRM team for
defending human rights defenders
HRD@yhrm.org