Transgender woman stabbed to death in Georgia amid LGBTQ bill controversy

Kesaria Abramidze, a transgender model, is killed successful Georgia, raising concerns implicit LGBTQ rights and safety.

A Georgian transgender exemplary and salient nationalist fig has been stabbed to decease successful her flat successful a “premeditated” attack, authorities say, amid disapproval of a government crackdown connected LGBTQ rights.

The histrion and influencer Kesaria Abramidze, 37, was killed successful a weapon onslaught connected Wednesday, a time aft a measure supporting “family values” passed its last reading. The instrumentality has been compared to Russia’s “gay propaganda” instrumentality and criticised by the European Union and rights groups arsenic stigmatising LGBTQ people.

Abramidze was the archetypal idiosyncratic successful Georgia to publically travel retired arsenic transgender. She represented the state astatine the Miss Trans Star International contention successful 2018 and had much than 500,000 followers connected Instagram.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said connected Thursday that she suffered “multiple stab wounds” and it was investigating a “premeditated execution committed with peculiar cruelty and aggravating circumstances connected sex grounds”.

Georgian media reported that the constabulary person arrested a antheral suspect.

Critics person agelong accused the ruling Georgian Dream enactment of stoking homophobia and transphobia and of pushing an anti-Western, anti-liberal docket earlier elections adjacent month.

Pro-EU President Salome Zurabishvili – astatine loggerheads with the authorities – condemned the “horrific murder” successful a Facebook post, saying “the calamity indispensable awaken Georgian society”.

Abramidze herself had antecedently criticised the government’s attack to home unit and women’s rights. In April, she said she was forced to temporarily fly abroad, fearing for her beingness aft attacks from a erstwhile partner.

“No to the femicide that has go truthful predominant successful our country!” she posted.

Georgia’s ain rights ombudsman said successful 2022 that “LGBT+ radical look persistent favoritism and unit successful each spheres of life”.

The latest measures, which request to beryllium signed into instrumentality by Zurabishvili oregon the parliament’s speaker, “concern restricting, successful acquisition institutions and TV broadcasts, the propaganda of same-sex relationships and incest”.

It besides bans sex transition, adoption by same-sex couples and transgender people, and nullifies same-sex marriages performed abroad.

Rights groups person criticised the wording for putting LGBTQ relations connected par with incest. Amnesty International called the measures “homophobic and transphobic”. And Brussels has said the measure “undermines cardinal rights of Georgians and risks further stigmatisation and favoritism of portion of the population”.

This determination comes little than a twelvemonth aft the authorities passed different arguable bill connected “foreign agents”, triggering protests and governmental tensions for months.

That measure requires media and NGOs to registry arsenic “pursuing the interests of a overseas power” if they person much than 20 percent of their backing from abroad. It is seen by galore arsenic influenced by akin authorities successful Russia, which has been utilized to clamp down connected the Kremlin’s governmental opponents and dissent.

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Al Jazeera and quality agencies