The 'new Ukraine' is failing us, LGBT activists say

Zo­ryan Kis was sit­ting on a bench in the cen­tre of Kiev with his boyfriend on his lap when a group of teenagers came up to them, asked if they were “pa­tri­ots” and doused them in pepper spray.

Friends rushed to help but the reaction to their public display of affection was clear – they were not welcome.

Kis and his partner, both LGBT activists, had decided to stage the moment to test how far Ukrainian attitudes towards the gay community had come since the historic Euromaidan protests of 2014.

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With the subsequent ousting of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych – who was known to court president Vladimir Putin’s favour by emulating his infamous “anti-gay laws” – the LGBT community was optimistic that attitudes would change.

However, two years on many have since found that persecution and prejudice continues, and that the free­doms called for by the protesters in Kiev’s independence square have been un­evenly ap­plied in post-rev­o­lu­tion Ukraine – particularly when it comes to sexuality.

In the west­ern city of Lviv lo­cal au­thor­i­ties announced earlier this month they could not pro­tect a fes­ti­val or­ga­nised by an LGBT or­gan­i­sa­tion, allowing the ho­tel where the event was about to take place to become sur­rounded by far-right ac­tivists in masks shout­ing “kill, kill, kill”. The or­ga­nis­ers were forced to cancel the event and leave the city over fears for their safety.

The Maidan narrative

“The sit­u­a­tion can lean ei­ther way,” says Kis, explaining that with the Maidan protests now playing a key part in the narrative of the “new Ukraine” the LGBT community – despite being on the frontlines of the unrest – has struggled to find its place.

He says this is partly because pro-Krem­lin me­dia was at­tempt­ing to por­tray the pro-EU protests two years ago as a tantrum by LGBT peo­ple yearn­ing to join “Gay­ropa”. His fellow ac­tivists de­cided not give them fur­ther am­mu­ni­tion by fly­ing the rain­bow flag.

To­day, Kis is not sure if that was the right decision. With im­ages of the “heroes of the heavenly hundred” – the pro­tes­ters who were killed during the uprising – dis­played in squares and schools across the coun­try, many in the LGBT community now feel they have been written out of the story.

“What we hear from our op­po­nents is ‘you were not there at the Maidan first’,” says Kis, an im­plicit ques­tion about whether the LGBT com­mu­nity is “re­ally Ukrain­ian”, he adds.

But for many protesters like Kis, gay rights were at the heart of Euromaidan. Members of the gay community turned out alongside thousands of other Ukrainians because they wanted changes to democracy and improvements to hu­man rights legislation – which they hoped closer association with Eu­rope would bring.

“For me Ukraine not sign­ing the As­so­ci­a­tion Agree­ment [under Yanukovych] also meant that it would be­come part of the so-called Russ­ian world. One of the va­lues of the so-called Russ­ian world is state spon­sored ho­mo­pho­bia,” says Kis.

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Change?

The new pro-European gov­ern­ment under Petro Poroshenko went on to sign the Association agree­ment leading to small improvement on the issue of gay rights, Kis says.

In November the government passed an amend­ment to the la­bour code mak­ing it il­le­gal to fire some­one on the basis of their sex­u­al­ity. Ukraine also hosted its sec­ond ever LGBT march, which despite being at­tacked by far right ac­tivists was also suc­cess­fully pro­tected by the country’s police force.

Sup­port from countries such as Germany, Poland and Sweden has been es­sen­tial for most re­forms in post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Ukraine, but the dif­fer­ence be­tween the popular anti-cor­rup­tion mea­sures and im­prove­ments to LGBT rights is that the for­mer have strong lo­cal sup­port.

The la­bour code amend­ment was a pre­req­ui­site for visa free travel in the EU, and last sum­mer’s march might not have taken taken place if western organisations had not put pres­sure on the re­luc­tant po­lice force to protect it.

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Recent polls also suggest attitudes amongst Ukrainains are yet to shift. A recent study conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology found that just 4.3% of Ukrainians hold “a positive view” of gay people, with 45.2% believing there should be restrictions on gay people’s rights down from 49% in 2011.

But in spite of this, Kis says he has hope in his so­ci­ety’s ca­pac­ity for change. He recalls a moment from the Maidan that fu­els this optimism. Af­ter LGBT ac­tivists de­cided not to demon­strate un­der their own ban­ners, far-right pro­tes­tors in­fil­trated the square wav­ing rain­bow flags to stoke unrest. Instead of falling for it, a mem­ber of the Maidan self-de­fence forces shouted as the group came closer: “Every­one keep calm! I know the Ukrain­ian gays are not part of [this] and this is pro-Russ­ian bull­shit.”

“I think it was the first time I’d heard ‘Ukrain­ian’ and ‘gay’ in one sen­tence,” Kis says. “It was a sign to me that Ukrain­ian iden­tity can em­brace also gay Ukraini­ans.”

A version of this article first appeared on Coda Story. You can read more from their investigation into the new east’s LGBT crisis here, or follow them on Twitter