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Swiss report over 100 homophobic attacks in three months

The Local
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Swiss report over 100 homophobic attacks in three months
Photo: nito103/Depositphotos"

The director of gay rights organization Pink Cross, Bastian Baumann, is calling for homophobic crimes to be recorded as such by police after a helpline set up by the organization recorded over 100 cases in just three months.

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The LGBT+ helpline was set up in December 2016 for victims to report cases of homophobic and transphobic violence in Switzerland, something that currently isn’t officially recorded. 
 
Speaking to broadcaster SRF on Wednesday, Baumann said the cases reported to the helpline involved people who had been “pushed and spat at, others have to go to hospital because they have been badly injured”. 
 
Pink Cross encourages victims to go to the police, where their cases are dealt with, however current Swiss law -- which specifies that every person should be treated equally regardless of sexual orientation -- does not demand they be explicitly recorded as homophobic violence.
 
For Baumann, that’s a mistake. If there is no data, “it’s as though these crimes do not exist”, he told the broadcaster.
 
MP Rosmarie Quadranti has submitted a proposal calling for the federal government to change its policy and include homophobic violence in the country’s official criminal statistics.
 
“Statistical data is important to help prevent such crimes,” the broadcaster reported her as saying.
 
Last year, after two gay men were attacked in a Geneva park, Geneva-based gay rights organization Dialogai said their studies showed that gay men in the city were four times as likely to be attacked as the male population as a whole.

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