Pepper spray and beating of LGBT youths at a bowling alley in El Bolsón
A group of young gay men and lesbians were insulted, beaten and finally expelled with pepper spray at the Absentha bowling alley in El Bolsón.
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Just hours before the end of the 11th annual El Bolsón Diversity Festival (Río Negro), a group of young gay men and lesbians were insulted, beaten, and ultimately expelled with pepper spray from the Absentha nightclub. Several ended up in the hospital, where they were initially denied medical attention. Six complaints have already been filed at Police Station 12. One of those attacked was Cristian Godoy, who covered the Festival for Presentes.
[READ ALSO: “Transfeminist and dissident”: 11 years of the El Bolsón Diversity Festival]
After 4 a.m., while two gay men were kissing at the Absentha nightclub, surrounded by their festival friends, a group of people began insulting them and then attacking them. Their friends came to their defense, and the club staff, from the bouncers to the DJ, kicked them out and used pepper spray.
"Get out, that's what happens to you for being faggots, queers, lesbians. This is the state of the country because of you," they shouted at them on the dance floor.
[READ ALSO: 2018: an attack or murder every 3 days against LGBT people in Argentina]
According to one of the six complaints filed, "They started attacking us with punches and kicks. They cornered us and broke a friend's finger. At that moment, the club's security arrived and tried to remove us. We explained that our belongings were there, but they pushed us out. As we were leaving, they sprayed pepper spray in our faces. My cousin passed out in the street. When the police arrived, they did nothing. They didn't help my cousin, nor did they go into the club. Later, the ambulance arrived, but they wouldn't let my friend get in; they dragged him out by force."
Dolores Carbajal, a member of the Festival's organizing committee and a feminist lawyer who supported the victims in filing their complaints, added that the Area Hospital initially denied them medical attention. "The kids are in shock because it was all very violent. Nobody defended them, quite the opposite," she told Presentes.
From the Self-Convened Diverse and Dissident Assembly in El Bolsón on the afternoon of Monday the 7th, after filing the corresponding complaints, the victims expressed in a statement:
“ The police, who arrived before the ambulance, did nothing to separate us from the aggressors. Inside the pub, the party continued. And the words that, in their mouths, are insults, continued: ‘faggots,’ ‘sickos,’ ‘because of you, the country is in this state,’ ‘fucking lesbians.’ We know that everything was recorded on cameras. […] Even though these episodes are repeated in the context of the country, region, and world where we live, we will never get used to violence. Our response, decided in assembly in the heat of the blows we received, is to put an end to this intolerance through what we know how to do: visibility, networks of affection, self-care, collective power, and sensitivity. Our identities are part of us all year round, beyond the festivals or spaces where we choose to move. The right to move about and express our kisses, desires, ways of dressing, or gestures is not something for which we should have to ask permission. Faced with heterocispatriarchal violence, we, the dissidents, remain alert and organized.” "We're never going back to the closet or the dungeon."
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