Jonatas Baptista
You
think two boys can freely hold hands in the centre of Brussels, the capital of
the second country in the world that made same-sex marriage legal? You are
WRONG.
It
is in the main square of Brussels that you get insulted for holding each
others’ hands by two straight men walking freely, holding their girlfriends'
hands, and get beaten by them until your face is bleeding. It is not even
midnight yet, plenty of people are walking around.
It
is in this very same square that the police, 20 meters away from you, doesn't
notice anything that is happening and when you run for their help in despair,
they tell you that they would punch you in the face too unless you calm down.
They do not offer any help, even if they see the blood dripping from your face
onto your clothes, the broken glasses… Instead of offering to take you to the
hospital, or try and look for the aggressors that ran away barely a minute ago,
they just tell you that you should hold your nerves and go get a certificate
from the hospital by yourself, because that is “the procedure”. You are made to
feel as if you were a criminal yourself, not a victim of a hideous crime. The
policemen refuse to show any identification and hide their names when kindly
asked to do so.
It
is in this very same Brussels, that you get shouted insults at in Arabic, while
walking in the streets with your bleeding face. And when you dare answer to
these insults, you get called a “yahudi”, a Jew.
The conclusion? Even in the most advanced and liberal countries, you
will find people who still live in the Middle Ages and for whom “gay" and
“Jew" are the worst insults. And even in the most democratic states,
supposedly amongst the most respectful of human rights, you can expect the
police to behave as it would in these very same countries where “gay" and
“jew" are insults. Call it irony.
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| Jonatas Baptista |
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| Jonatas Baptista |
14 years old Dominik
Szymanski (from Poland) hung himself after experiencing severe bullying at
school. In his farewell letter to his mother, he apologised for the action he
was about to take and also named the bullies. According
to the letter, classmates were calling him ‘Faggot’ and throwing stones at him.
Constant hatred from peers became unbearable and consequently, mother found his body hung on
the shoelaces..
