Moldova’s legislation concerning the protection of discriminated people improves from year to year, but sufficient mechanisms are not yet applied to prevent offenses motivated by hatred against persons of nontraditional sexual orientation, said representatives of the Information Center Genderdoc-M, which promotes the interests of homosexuals and bisexuals.

In a news conference at IPN, Lobby and Advocacy program coordinator Angela Frolov said that 21 cases of violence against homosexuals and bisexuals have been reported this year. Of the cases recorded by the organization, 13 were sent to the police and in all of them the offenders were identified. Two cases were remitted to court, while five were solved by amicable ways. None of the cases reported to the executive bodies was yet considered homophobic crime that is defined as aggravating circumstance in Article 76 of the Criminal Code.

“We consider that Article 76 of the Criminal Code must be supplemented as the legislation does not protect the rights of homosexuals and bisexuals. If the rights of a person were infringed because this person belongs to group, no matter what group, this should be considered aggravating circumstance,” stated Angela Frolov.

Lobby and Advocacy program assistant at Genderdoc-M Artiom Zavadovschi said the law enforcement bodies treat the homosexuals with humiliation and disdain, while the representatives of the Military Prosecutor’s Office are homophobes and consider that the servicemen mustn’t be punished when they humiliate the homosexuals.

According to an anonymous survey cried out by Genderdoc-M, 14 homosexuals and bisexuals said that they were subject to physical and verbal violence owing to their sexual orientation. In 11 cases, the victims didn’t go to the police because they don’t trust the law enforcement bodies or because they thought they will be humiliated by them. In the other cases, the victims informed the police, but none of the cases was sent to court.