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By Rosario Marina. Illustration: Florencia Capella

For P and Y, two young gay men who were attacked in the City of Buenos Aires, there will be no justice: after five months since the attack they suffered while walking kissing in the streets of Palermo (City of Buenos Aires) and the analysis of multiple security cameras, the prosecutor Paola de Minicis archived the case that investigated “minor injuries aggravated by having been committed based on sexual orientation”. 

“We’re outraged. That we’ve done so much and they can’t do anything,” P told Presentes. On September 30, 2020, P and her boyfriend Y were walking home after having a beer. “We stopped at a corner, Aráoz at 1900. We started kissing, just kissing, something that shouldn’t bother anyone on the planet, something that doesn’t happen when it’s a man and a woman, for example,” Y told Presentes the day after the attack. In addition to the blows they received that night, which left Y with injuries to both knees, his right elbow, the palm of his left hand, and pain in his left shoulder and left ear, the couple reported two more incidents: homophobic messages on social media and attacks at their front door. The investigation into those incidents will also be shelved. 

Some of the messages they received: "Long live HIV," "They got their asses kicked," "AIDS patients," "They'll get caught again and they won't live to tell the tale," "Minorities adapt to the majority, not the other way around! And if you don't understand it the easy way, you'll have to understand it the hard way!", "The good thing is that we know where you live, it's just a matter of coming to find you!".

Ricardo Villarino, from 100% Diversity and Rights, recalls another discriminatory and violent incident in the City of Buenos Aires: on October 21, 2018, when Sergia Tomás Rodríguez was assaulted by waiters at the Academia Della Pizza restaurant in Palermo for kissing her boyfriend in the establishment. “Although there were training initiatives, the lawsuit never went anywhere; it was dismissed because they said there was no evidence.” 

Ricardo knows this keeps happening, and it worries him: “We see a constant pattern: people attacked in places that are heavily patrolled by the police. There are attackers in public, clearly motivated by homophobia. The injuries are documented, reports are filed, but they can never be identified. There are no witnesses. This is concerning because it clearly sends the message that gay or LGBT people can be attacked with impunity.” 

Malfunctioning cameras and more violence

The PCyF Prosecutor's Office No. 22 decided to close the case. It also outlined some actions, such as requesting the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, specifically the Urban Monitoring Area, to install new cameras on certain streets in Palermo. The prosecutor detailed, point by point, the security cameras that were included in the investigation. In each case, she explained why they were not useful: some due to poor resolution, others because they were not functioning. 

P decided today to respond to the decision to close the investigation. He did so before the prosecutor's office of the Western Court of the City of Buenos Aires: “I am appearing to exercise my right to be heard and to express my disagreement with the results of the investigation, as it is my intention not to condone the cycle of violence that my partner and I have endured as a result of kissing in public, acts which have gone unpunished.” Among the abuses suffered, he lists physical violence, but also institutional violence by the police, violence received on social media, symbolic violence from a media outlet—Crónica TV—and the feeling of being left without recourse to the justice system. 

On the Crónica TV channel, one of their interviewers asked them: “There are people who have expressed their support and solidarity with you, right? I’ve been reading that on social media in the last few hours, but they also say, ‘Well, but no, for example, it’s okay for them to grope each other in the squares,’ for example, in a public place where, perhaps, a father is walking his little boy. I mean, what would be the limit of this demonstration of affection, right?”. 

At that time, P and Y reported this situation to the Ombudsman's Office. There, a socio-semiotic analysis of the news story was conducted. "While the coverage makes the event visible and presents a condemnatory approach to the violence suffered by those interviewed, it reveals sensationalism by encouraging the reproduction of a kiss, and an inappropriate and harmful question was raised by the columnist's intervention when asking about the limits of displays of affection," stated the agency that defends the rights of audiences.

They are requesting police and judicial training on sexual diversity.

Ricardo Villarino, from 100% Diversity and Rights, explained why in many of these cases the aggressors are not identified. “Action is slow. Witnesses don't recognize the situation as a homophobic attack because they don't know how to identify it; the attackers act quickly and knowingly, with tolerance and minimization of the impact by security personnel. And the investigation doesn't usually develop strategies to prosecute the specific violence against LGBT people in their particular contexts and forms.”.

Following the attack in October 2020, the LGBT Ombudsman's Office, part of the Institute Against Discrimination of the Ombudsman's Office of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, issued recommendations to the Metropolitan Police, concluding that "the City Police act in a discriminatory manner towards LGBT+ people, in this case two gay men, through: 1. The refusal of two officers to identify the aggressors who were stalking the couple in the area after the attack; 2. The refusal to provide them with immediate medical attention upon request; 3. The treatment without a gender and sexual diversity perspective; 4. The delay in taking their statements, despite them being the only private citizens present at the police station; 5. The systematic alteration of the victims' account; 6. The omission of the real motive for the hate crime and the fact that they were a gay male couple; this had to be repeated, explained, and reinforced on multiple occasions for the officers to understand and record it."

In addition to documenting all the violence they suffered, P and Y requested something that they believe could change things for the future: training for local police officers on sexual diversity, human rights, non-discrimination and dignified treatment; and also courses on sexual diversity for those who work in the Judiciary and in the Public Prosecutor's Offices. 

“Not only did the police agency lack perspective and fail to fulfill its basic duties, but it also obstructed the investigation. Things would have been different if they had pursued and apprehended the attackers. It would have been over. And if there had been cameras, they could have been identified and proven who they were,” P. lamented. 

After the attack, the police said there were no witnesses, “when practically the entire block came out to help us, to come to our aid, to prevent things from getting worse. They [the police] denied it, in addition to arriving late and having seen them escape. They took two hours to take our report, without providing us with medical assistance. Institutionally, they failed.”.

“Now the message is: it goes unpunished,” says P. “There were witnesses who didn’t see it, cameras that didn’t see it. It’s precisely about not wanting to see the homophobia that exists in people, in speeches, and in society.”

At the victims' request, their identities are protected in this article and they are referred to by their initials.