Sashko Shevchenko
Hello, everyone, ladies and gentlemen and everybody who finds themselves in between. I’m happy to welcome you to our discussion on this wonderful occasion of the pride month that is now going on. We gathered here online today to discuss the challenges that LGBT plus people faced across Europe and how the Russian war against Ukraine has exacerbated these threats. Also, we will also try to come up with ideas on how the transatlantic community and the transatlantic alliance can work together to bolster democratic values and protect LGBT people and LGBT rights. So these are the main topics we are going to cover today. And I just want to let everybody know who is watching us that this event is hosted by the Center for European Policy Analysis. So I want to say thank them for doing that and organizing this event and inviting these wonderful guests that I’m going to introduce right now. So we will have Aron Demeter Head of Research and Communication at Amnesty International Hungary. We’ll have Tamar Oniani, human rights program director at Georgian Young Lawyers Association will have Samuel Ritholtz, Max Weber Fellow at European University Institute, and Mikhail Tumasov, who is a member of the Russian LGBT Network and right now a board member of Lesben- und Schwulenverband Organization Association, which is in English means lesbian and gay association of Germany. Very happy to welcome everybody here, this panel discussion and I, I believe it’s going to be fruitful and insightful. My name is Sashko Shevchenko, I will be a moderator of today’s discussion. I’m a multimedia producer at Radio Free Europe. And in my day-to-day work, I cover human rights issues, particularly the rights of the LGBT community in Ukraine. So I want to start our conversation with the challenges that LGBT people face today across Europe. And these experiences vary from country to country. For instance, in Hungary, last year, Orban’s government held a referendum that many activists and NGOs called as the one that is anti-LGBT. And I don’t want to put any words in the mouths of these organizations. As long as we have a representative of Amnesty International here with us today, I want to ask Aaron Demeter, what was that referendum about, and how civil society tried to publicly protest against it. What are the results, so the floor is yours?
Áron Demeter
Thank you very much, Sashko. And great to be here. So I’ll talk about the referendum in a minute. But I think to have a clearer picture of Hungary and LGBT rights. Currently, I have to go back a few years. So if you might, let me I’ll just briefly do that. So a couple of years ago, the Hungarian government and representatives of the Hungarian government started to use the LGBTQIA community and people belonging to that community as kind of the new scapegoat. Basically, what we’ve seen, at first were statements from the government saying that actually the LGBT people are a threat to children, they are a threat to the so-called traditional form of family and the traditional European way of living. And after, after a while, they started not just talking about the issue, but actually actively legislating on the issue. So in 2020, they banned legal gender recognition for transgender and intersex people. A few months later, they banned adoption for LGBTI people and single parents, both homosexuals and heterosexuals. And in 2022, they adopted a law, which is very similar to the Russian, so-called propaganda law in Hungary, basically, or effectively banning the so-called portrayal and promotion of homosexuality and gender change in the media and in public education. But that wasn’t enough. Hungary had a national election in 2022. So the government decided to amp up its homophobic and transphobic rhetoric. So they organized a referendum, a national referendum to kind of backup and create, you know, support from the society around that low. So basically, we had a national referendum in April 2022, posing questions about the portrayal and promotion of homosexuality to the public. And since it was the same day as the national election, there was quite a well-founded fear that this referendum might be valid. And that it would mean that further legislation will come down, and further legislation will be adopted against the LGBTQI community in Hungary. So with one of our partners, one of the LGBTI organization partners of Amnesty Hungary, we led the campaign, basically, invalidating the referendum. So we asked the people to go there and cast an invalid vote at the referendum, because the questions were so nonsense that we found that, you know, people have to show up and people have to, like publicly demonstrate that they are against, against this referendum and the questions and, and the narrative around it. The government dubbed it as a family protection referendum, so the narrative or the framing around the referendum was that LGBTI people are a threat to children, because some of them or most of them are actually pedophiles, and I think that will resemble, other countries as well. Definitely with Russia. So we decided to run a campaign on values, basically. So instead of talking about how nonsense this framing and this narrative is, we featured LGBTI people and featured their co-workers and parents and friends and family members, talking about safety and family and what family means to them. We never said anything about the government’s position basically what we try to do is to tell people that families come in many shapes and forms. And we all want to have our family members in safety, it doesn’t matter what your family looks like. And this is a quite unique campaign in Hungary. And at the end, we managed to mobilize more than 1.7 million people to cast an invalid ballot. So the referendum turned out to be invalid, which basically says the government didn’t have a chance to adopt even more restrictive legislation on that.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you very much, Aaron, for this information and insights on how these threats are visible in Hungary. And how what is more important is how civil society and NGOs can work together to use democratic tools, try to protest against those because democracy is the way the society functions where everyone is respected equally and has equal rights. And you said that some of these experiences might be relevant, not just for Hungary, these narratives that the conservative groups sometimes use are sometimes similar. And that’s why when we speak about these challenges, we cannot ignore the Russian experience, of course, because the country where the elections, for instance, were proved to be manipulated, it’s not a big problem, I guess, to manipulate the referendum like the one that happened in Hungary. But does Russia actually need that kind of referendum? What’s the situation in Russia? What, can the activist and NGOs do in society? In Russian society today, especially given that today Russia is waging a very aggressive war and the laws inside Russia have become even more restrictive? So I’ll ask Mikhail Tumasov to join our conversation and tell us more about that. The floor is yours.
Mikhail Tumasov
Yeah, thank you very much for the question, which is really really, really tricky. And I thought it’d be not easy to meet because just recently we spoke with his colleagues who stayed in Russia, they still working on the issue of human rights, the strike, they try to support the people who are still fighting against the regime, at least. And nowadays, of course, it’s very, very difficult after Russia launched this absolutely aggressive and bloody war against Ukraine, you should know that even the word war is prohibited in Russia, they are obliged to use another abbreviation to describe the word, otherwise, they will be labeled as an enemy of the state. So that’s mostly the work of the activists who stay in Russia. They do it in some way, I would say partisan way. So they making some networks. Of course, mostly, it’s more about like social support people rather than advocacy, that’s absolutely impossible to make any kind of advocacy in Russia nowadays, actually, because there is none who will be listening to you. And no international laws, no international declaration about it for the regime. And the worst situation is that Russia is spreading this practice, not just among its population, but also among other populations. For example, even when the sight of Russia, there are some media, central media, federal media, which is ruled by the state, where the show, when they invade one Ukrainian city, they show that the Office of LGBT organization, local Ukraine LGBT organization, and they say that is that it’s a place where LGBTI people which supported by Biden, personally, that was literally said in mass media, and also the show kind of people with a certain image to show that LGBT and anti-Christian Christianity and American are connected with combo. So that is simple. People could see through the federal channels. And I would say other ways, which Russia also influenced other countries, it’s a political way, some economical way. You see I think that, of course, Tamar will say about its more deeply. But definitely, Russia is trying to influence the Georgian government through economic pressure as well, unfortunately, and of course, historical ways, like is done with Serbia, for example, some Hungary, and etcetera just yesterday, you can see that pro-Russian party made sabotage in Sofia, right. So that’s the way we live and work but still sets, we have some scope. And I think that part is underway, which is now just constructing because we have never been in such a situation. It’s our aim. And we still think that we can manage it and save people and go on with human rights fighting in even such areas as Russia.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you very much Mikhail for the insights about Russia and what is going on inside the country. And also its impact on the neighboring countries and not only countries that are neighbor, Russia but even further. I’ll, in a moment, I will turn to our next speaker, but having this opportunity, I just also want to add some context about how the war that Russia started more than a year ago against the grain affected Ukraine. And in particular, LGBT people that actually, given all the negative outcomes kind of triggered the legislation, which is more LGBT friendly in Ukraine. That’s what we report that there are a few real in our articles and show that some of the initiatives moved from being on standby and that also comes to civil partnership legislation, because of the war and the couples that when one partner goes to war and his or hers, there’s a partner stay back home and they are an LGBT couple, they are very, very much deprived of many, many rights that families have in Ukraine. So that kind of triggered a discussion within Ukrainian society, whether it is time to legalize civil partnerships and give more rights to LGBT people. That’s also one of the outcomes and impacts of the war that started a year ago. But now I want to give the floor to our next speaker to Tamar Oniani And ask her about the judging experience. Michaela has already touched on that, that there are some external actors that play here. But I also want to want to ask you to touch on how the Georgian government kind of behaves in its Euro integration as an aspiration given that trying to become an EU member means obeying European laws, how is this situation was that in Georgia?
Tamar Oniani
Hello, thank you, first of all, for inviting me to this very important and interesting discussion, starting from the Gieorgia EU integration path. Actually, this is very related to the topic that we are exploring because ensuring equality rights is one of the 12 priorities framed by the European Commission for Georgia. And first of all, I want to stress the fact that the Georgian people have many times demonstrated that their values and their aspirations are clearly pro-European. And also our Constitution guarantees that Georgia’s foreign policy should be European. But we now need to explore the current developments on the national level. And unfortunately, I don’t have exciting news to say in that respect, because what we witnessed is clearly the reiteration of the history that happened in Russia since 2012, when first of all the foreign agent school was initiated, when, for example, the so-called propaganda law was initiated, etc. In February, this year, the draft rules on foreign agents has been initiated in the parliament. But as a result of this park, and the massive protests in the streets, the government has to have to withdraw these fields. And fortunately, they are clearly withdrawn as of now. But we don’t think that this is enough, because on an everyday basis, we see the clear threats, and we see that the damage is being done on an everyday basis by governmental officials. And this also has some expressions of respect for the anti-LGBTQI authorities from high-level officials. And now coming back to this issue. Under the EU recommendations and priorities. Also, it was one of the obligations of the states to ensure that impunity for hate crimes is no longer an issue on the national level. And we have witnessed a number of cases won by applicants against Georgia and Strasbourg courts. But recently last year, we clearly read the statement from the Strasbourg judgment saying that impunity for past experiences is one of the major causes for new circumstances to happen. And there is what we see because the LGBTQI community is clearly restricted on the practical level to realize their peaceful demonstration rights, and they have to hold all the events that they intend to hold in the closed festivities because there exists clearly hate groups and we can label them as the hate groups, which are related to Kremlin, they have their political party registered and they are actually the ones who were the organizers of the Fifth of July violence against the LGBTQIA community and against media representatives in Georgia in 2021. And the open source evidence, witnesses this and proves this and it was the sentence from the public defender’s office to the prosecutor to also introduce charges against them but none of the organizers are punished, this leads us to the problem that there also exist challenges on the institutional level. Because of all these cases in Strasbourg, all of them had the same problem, the ineffectiveness of the investigation. So that is why the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, has on numerous occasions urged the Georgian authorities to establish the special investigative unit within the Ministry of Interior Affairs, which is not as of now fulfilled. And another issue that is clearly a problem is the authorities from the high-level officials because their statements have a way of encouraging effect on society. So it is about the content of the statements, whether it is about tolerance or what it is about to spread hate. So in this respect, there also exist clear findings from the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers that urge the Georgian high-level officials to have statements encouraging tolerance, but what we see clearly is the authority that is against it, there is anti LGBTQI community there and it was very rightly mentioned by the previous speakers that the LGBTQI community is becoming some kind of escape codes and under this overarching trend to shrink the individual rights or to have this pseudo-conservative values that are actually against the human rights and not only against the concrete community but in general human rights. And this is also directly related to the foreign policy issue, because there exists a very clear, very obvious similarity to the Russian laws, and between the draft laws that are initiated on the national level by the hate groups, or the statements that are being spread by the high-level officials. So this is briefly what I can say about the Georgian experience in that respect.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you very much, Tamar, for sharing your knowledge and sharing the specifics of how the fight for LGBT rights goes on in Georgia, we have already heard of three different experiences from different European countries. And we have found similarities and we have an as well found that external actors like Russia, for instance, can influence these processes within other countries. So having discovered that I want to ask our never our next speaker Samuel Ritholtz, to share his insights on how the Russian war has affected the fight for LGBT rights in Europe, in general across the entire continent. Whether there are some very similar principles we should focus on today, in order to understand how to face these challenges, Samuel, the floor is yours.
Samuel Ritholtz
Great, thank you so much for having me. And for inviting me. I want to take a moment just to acknowledge the amazing speakers that I’m speaking with on this panel, who are all frontline defenders, activists, and lawyers, working at great risks to themselves and their families, which is something that as an academic, I am I’m not nearly subject to. So I want to just value and hold space for these efforts by them and their colleagues, which are truly inspirational, given the odds. Um, I think that to answer this question, it actually makes sense to go earlier before the actual war in Ukraine about you know, a year and three months ago or four months ago, when we’re talking about these trends, whether it’s Hungary, whether it’s Georgia, whether it’s Russia, there’s there’s there’s obviously similarities, there’s these patterns. And I think some of this playbook did originate in Russia, this politicizing, of you know, quotidian, LGBT experience quotidian or daily LGBT life. And it goes it you know, it starts in Russia, but it’s, it’s, it’s happens in other places as well. I mean, you’re seeing this in Latin America, you’re seeing the United States and you’re seeing this elsewhere, beyond Central and Eastern Europe, but also in Southern and Western Europe. And what I think is interesting here to highlight and to kind of think about in terms of frames of resistance, if you will, I would probably be three points, which I think relate to the war in by Russia and Ukraine, but as well as other growing trends. The first is what I call this politicization of hard-fought wins, or hard-fought gains. And that is, you know, after years of this perceived, you know, march of progress as it relates to LGBT populations in Europe, and you know, outside of Europe, there has been a lot of kind of reopening of previous conversations as they relate to LGBT rights. You know, what does LGBT rights mean, in terms of the family? What does it mean, in terms of the child, you know, this nameless child that has always been mentioned, these frames of what you call, scapegoating are basically tactics to legitimize the legalization or criminalization of certain types of behaviors that are often associated with LGBT people. And so this politicization of basically fights and debates where there weren’t debates or fights five years ago, it’s something that happens, perhaps, perhaps, in the civil space in the social space. But it’s something that government rhetoric really maximizes and can exacerbate. And that’s what you’re seeing in Russia, you know, and when it came to multiple times, Vladimir Putin justifying the war in Ukraine, he used frames of gender ideology, frames of anti-LGBT rhetoric as a justification for engaging in this type of behavior. And so there you see almost that nexus of, you know, what’s happening in social spaces, what’s happening in civil society, being used as a reason or justification for violent behavior or war itself, in the case of Russia, or in this political space. But that is something that extends beyond just the war in Russia, I mean, it’s something that probably the three people that are on this panel with me would all talk about in their own domestic contexts of where they where they’ve seen this happen. And that’s, really, it’s the two other trends that I think we’re seeing here, which is this growing illiberalism, which is these ideas, these liberal values that existed, and this is lowercase, liberal, not necessarily defined with a certain political movement. But this idea of, you know, one’s freedom to express themselves once the freedom to engage in certain unassailable rights, these, these rights that will come from just being a human being seeing that be clamped down, in both from an LGBT perspective, but from a broader perspective, so these bills that are being used to try and criminalize protests to criminalize civil freedom of expression. These are things that relate very much to LGBT populations, but they also relate to the broader population. And so it’s something to think about in terms of looking at how these struggles are interconnected, or intersected that what happens in one space is very much have a secondary impact. And it can, it can impact people in different ways, depending on you know, the different ways that it intersects with your identity. And the last thing I’ll say, on this point before getting to talk about perhaps a little bit more about Ukraine, is the transnational nature of this struggle and the transnational nature of this this this issue, really, which is that we’re seeing not only trends in terms of patterns, but we’re seeing a lot of interconnection, in terms of where does where, where do these groups are working together behind the scenes? Where’s it obvious? Where’s it less obvious? So there’s already been mentioned about how the Russian government’s working with certain groups approaching groups, whether it’s Hungary, whether it’s Serbia, whether it’s Georgia, to try and push forward some of this illiberal legislation or illiberal policy, but they’re also non-state actors very much working on this. And there’s there are groups that follow this quite closely open democracy is an organization that’s one of them, where they basically follow these, these illiberal, or anti-LGBT rights groups, civil society organizations, religious organizations, that behind the scenes are putting forward these types of campaigns that are moving to fund these campaigns and to really recognize, recognize and reconcile with the fact that a lot of these things might seem like they’re popping up disparately in different countries, but they’re actually extremely interconnected. And so it’s to say that the issues are interconnected. You know, what happens in one space relates to another but it’s also the causes are very interconnected, whether we’re talking about its certain involvement with the Russian government, or whether it is broader civil society organizations. And to conclude, basically, what we can understand with what’s happening in Ukraine today, and how this relates to the state of LGBTQ rights in Ukraine, but also Europe, is, I guess, three quick points. The first is what we’re seeing here is this rhetoric, and that rhetoric can be used as a very legitimizing frame for violent intervention. So I already mentioned how Vladimir Putin uses this type of anti-LGBT rhetoric to justify the war in Ukraine. But this is something that happens in other spaces as well where certain types of frames to protect the family or to protect the child or to securitize and frame LGBT people as threats become reasons or rhetorical instruments to justify violent coercive behavior. The second thing is that, you know, it’s it’s a broad observation, that war exacerbates a lot of social inequalities that are already there. And so when you have an issue, when you have a country at war, when you have existing homophobia, existing patriarchy, existing norms that go against LGBT populations, LGBT populations, in situations of crisis are going to have to navigate these norms, often in a more intense way. Sorry, there’s a thunderstorm happening outside, I hope you can hear me, okay? And so with these norms, and with the stresses, it just means that certain types of things happen with LGBT populations that exacerbate their vulnerability. So, in Ukraine, what’s been what some of my research has shown both and talking with colleagues who are a lot closer on the ground, is that certain types of experiences make it more difficult to navigate the politics of living in a war zone, you know, being trans in a war zone, being disabled in a war zone. All of these things make it a lot more complicated to go about your daily life to find security to navigate. You know, we’ve already mentioned about spousal benefits are what happens when your partner’s away at war. And so these are things that basically recognize the vulnerabilities that are produced in society. That’s the stress through conflict. And the final point, I’ll say is that, you know, with war comes migration, it comes displacement. And so now there are I don’t know, these current numbers of how many Ukrainians that are throughout Europe, and how many of them are LGBT, LGBT migrants have unique vulnerabilities, they are not able to access certain resources in the same way, they might feel uncomfortable accessing certain shelters, they might not worry about the shelter that they would like to have access to correspond to their gender identity. And so all these things are just to recognize that these experiences are extremely framed through one’s identities. And the stress of displacement, the stress of conflict means that one’s vulnerabilities will be exacerbated, exacerbated. And so it’s, it’s, it’s important to kind of think about not only what this means in terms of response, but also to think about difference and how we can reconcile these differences. You know, we say LGBT, it’s an acronym with a lot of different identities, we have a lot of different experiences, what happens to a lesbian woman, let’s have Ukrainian women very different than happens to date, Ukrainian male. And so things like that are things that should be reconciled and thought of.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you very much Samuel for such a very broad, but very specific and detailed outline of the challenges that stand in front of the LGBT+ community and also allies, who try to fight for the rights of people they, love, maybe, and the people who they want to live in the same society where everyone feels comfortable. So thank you for that. I just want to really add here that the challenges faced by the Ukrainian LGBT people today have really kind of enhanced and probably even changed, there is a lot of debate on that. And I’m very sorry that we do have not enough time to talk about all of them. But that’s a very good start that the discussion that we have here. Today, I just want to say that Pride Month, actually originated in the US and I’ve just come back, from the US. And I’ve seen so many LGBT Pride flags on all the businesses and as well as heard many hateful comments about those flags so we can see that American society is also divided on that. But we can see strong support from the current US government to fight for LGBT rights, at least we could see the white house being on rain rainbow colors. So having said that I want to turn our discussion to the ways that can the transatlantic community, not just in Europe, but also in the Americas, not just the northern but also the southern Americas can work together on what can be the main core principles here that can help the societies on both sides of the Atlantic? protect LGBT rights. I’m gonna ask you the same question. What are your insights and thoughts on that? How the Transatlantic Alliance can work together? And I want to ask you to be brief if possible. So we’ll we’ll start with Aaron. Again. The floor is yours.
Áron Demeter
Thank you. I’ll try to be brief. So I think we kind of established that there are patterns and it’s definitely there are a lot of links and it does didn’t really matter where the location that we are talking about. So I think the solution and the kind of my proposed solution should be also interconnected and should, should be, should be done pretty much by all of us. So I think, the human rights community, and when I say human rights community, I talk about a broad, a broad coalition of different organizations and activists and people invested in this sphere. We got it wrong for so many years, and for so many decades, from a sense that we thought that it is enough that we are right. So that it is enough that we have the international legal documents, we have different mechanisms, both at regional both at national and last global level. But what we see is that because of this utilization of values, like family and safety and protection and prosperity and fairness, by the populist governments, we kind of lost these words. So I think we have to acknowledge that communicating their values and communicating the world that they believe in, or the world they want to live in, usually, populist governments are doing a much better job than human rights organizations. So I think one lesson to be learned is that we have to invest a lot more in research around values. Because I think this fight will not be one with facts. I don’t think that myth-busting what the human rights community has been doing for several decades is actually really working. Don’t get me wrong, we need the facts. And we need the researches. And we need the analysis, but convincing people and engaging people that’s more about the values and talk about the kind of world that we want to live in. So in that sense, I think we have to be more appealing when we are talking about what kind of world we envisage, and what needs to be done to get there. And I think that’s one of the key lessons from the last couple of yours definitely not just around LGBTI rights and the situation of LGBTI rights, but also refugees, asylum seekers, Roma, women, name it, so all the vulnerable groups have the same, has the same problems. So my like advice and try not to be the cheaper version of Timothy Snyder, I think we have to, like reclaim those words like family and fairness and security, because currently, these words are possessed by the populist government, and they are actually using against us and the communities that we are trying to protect.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you. Thank you very much, Aaron. So I will write down no down the idea of trying to win the fight back against the notions of family and traditional values. If we speak about those two, I’m afraid to tell you that we really, really have not enough time. So I’ll try. I want to be you to be brief. Miko, can you add?
Mikhail Tumasov
Yes, I would say we as a society should be less comfortable. We have to be more proactive, looking at the history of relief. And also I would call ourselves to look inside of the organizations we work with, if we follow the values of human rights, we should start with ourselves first.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you very much. And now the floor goes to Tamar Oniani.
Tamar Oniani
I strongly believe in the statement that the violation in one part of the world is felt everywhere. And actually, the current events all around the world ensure that the illiberal Democracies and the trends and the patterns are very similar. So this is the avenue I think that the transatlantic communities can collaborate very well. Civil society collaboration between the different contexts is very important because that is how new ideas are born. And what I think is essential to strive for at strong institutions. Because no research, like no advocacy, will ever be practical if we do not have strong institutions actually guaranteeing the practical implementation of all the rights that we strive to maintain.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you very much. It’s a very valid point when we discuss the human rights issues, especially for the young democracies, and especially for the post-Soviet countries that have only started building their institutions. That’s a very important point. And now to Samuel, please tell us what your additional thoughts on that are. How can the Transatlantic Alliance work better to protect LGBT rights?
Samuel Ritholtz
Yeah, I agree with what’s been said by my co-panelists, I think it’s really important to always speak out. And that comes from the highest members of society, or most visible to the lowest that communication is key to call out abuse, call out injustice. I think communication alliances meaning communication between organizations, or between activists, between groups, successful efforts in one country as a way to learn about what’s happened, or how to prevent something in another I mean, that successful case from Hungary, successful case of activists in Georgia, that’s been documented, Costa Rica had a massive movement against LGBT, against the candidate against an anti-LGBT candidate that was running for office for President. So how again, groups have responded to this backlash successfully is vital. And the last thing is just to continue to elevate those on the ground doing the work. So you know, those working at national organizations or international organizations looking to connect in these countries, rather than going towards another big eye, NGO, or I O, look towards the local organization that’s doing the work on the ground and bring them up and really embolden them that’s been very vital in Ukraine, and they will continue to be vital in countries like Russia, Hungary, and Georgia.
Sashko Shevchenko
Thank you very much, Samuel. And thank you very much to all the panelists, I believe it has proved to be a very fruitful and interesting discussion. So let me just briefly sum up the conclusions we came up with here. So the panelists who joined us today, agreed that it is important not to forget about the words and the choice of words and the values, but also not to forget about the facts. When we’re talking about the LGBT communities, it is also important to stand for the values, if someone is the representative of an NGO, and who is an activist be responsible and correspond to those values they stand for. It is also important, as we discussed today to build strong institutions because those institutions are actually the most efficient way and probably in some cases, the only way to protect the rights of the vulnerable communities, not just the LGBT communities, but the LGBT plus people in particular. And it’s also important to look to the neighbors to see the experiences of other countries to find good examples, and to apply those examples, not to make the same mistakes, but also to, repeat successful, successful stories. I believe that the things we discussed today are only a start as only a start to understanding how to enhance the fight for the LGBT plus community. Because even though a lot of things have been already achieved, there are so many things to work on, especially within societies and fighting homophobia within societies. I’m very thankful to all the panelists who joined us today. who join us today. And, as a closing remark, I want to say that everyone who viewed us today that I think I want to thank you for tuning in for this conversation on LGBT plus rights, and the Transatlantic Alliance. They can work together to enhance this fight. I want to remind you that this event was hosted by the Center for European Policy Analysis. So again, a huge thank you to this organization for organizing this event with amazing speakers. And for the ability to discuss LGBT plus rights. I want to remind you that if you want to follow Central European Policy Analysis and so on social media accounts, please visit the website cepa.org. And you will find all the latest analyses, all the latest discussions, and to also follow the upcoming events. So please do and you will be updated on this extremely important analysis of policies that are relevant for Europe, as well as the transatlantic alliance. My name is Samuel Ritholtz, Thank you very much to everyone who joined us today. And just to remind you who was here with us today? So today we heard from Aaron Demeter had the research and communication at Amnesty International Hungary. From Tamar Oniani, a human rights program director at the Georgian Young Lawyers Association. We also heard from Samuel Ritholtz Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and from Mikhail Tomaso, a member of the Russian LGBT network and a board member at Lesben- und Schwulenverband organization in Germany. Thanks again and have a nice day. Goodbye.
