Assault On LGBTI Freedoms In Eastern Europe, Explained

What You Need To Know:

✅ Stories about rising LGBTI violence in Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan or Armenia remain largely ignored and untold;
✅ A news-project Coda Story launches with a series of dispatches documenting LGBTI abuses all around Eastern Europe;
✅ "I believe that gay rights in the former Soviet Union is the frontline of the battle for human rights";
✅ Antelava is concerned with dramatic worsening of LGBTI freedoms in the region in recent 3-4 years.

The obsession with breaking news and news-cycle culture at global newsrooms is damaging their abilities to cover many regions, including Eastern Europe, adequately. In result, stories like rising LGBTI violence in Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan or Armenia remain largely ignored and untold. New crowdsourced news-project in English tries to break this toxic culture by devoting all resources for covering one topic at a time. Coda Story, based in Tbilisi, Georgia, launches with a series of dispatches documenting LGBTI abuses all around Eastern Europe.

“We decided that it is a perfect crisis subject. It is a crisis that certainly goes far beyond Russia. And this is a crisis that goes far beyond LGBTI community. And that’s how this story is often not told… I believe that gay rights in the former Soviet Union is the frontline of the battle for human rights,” Natalia Antelava, a co-founder of Codastory.org tells Hromadske.

Antelava is concerned with dramatic worsening of LGBTI freedoms in the region in recent 3-4 years. “It was always a taboo, it was always very difficult. But one of the most interesting things about doing Coda project on LGBTI rights was talking to people who spent a lot of time in Russia in early 1990s, when there was a real promise of freedom in many areas, but including gay couples and gay life in general. And to see how that space was closed down over time and completely shut down in the last 3 or 4 years, that was exactly what we wanted to explore,” Antelava explains.

Natalia Antelava, a co-founder of Codastory.org joined Hromadske’s Maxim Eristavi live from Tbilisi, Georgia through Skype during the Sunday Show broadcast on February 28th, 2016.