Discriminative Details of Anti-Discriminative Amendments

“Racial, language, religious, national or ethnic intolerance shall aggravate the charge for any criminal offence.” MPs Kakha Anjaparidze and Zviad Kukava intend to introduce the abovementioned changes into the Criminal Code of Georgia by a special draft-law.

Organization for Gender Equality and LGBT Rights “Identity” released a special statement about it. The authors of the statement request to add sexual orientation and general identity to the list of aggravating circumstances mentioned in the Article 53 of the Criminal Code of Georgia.

Magda Kalandadze, Public Relation Officer at the Identity, said “when the draft-law lists almost every discriminative circumstances, omitting sexual orientation and gender identity from the text violates anti-discriminative principle.”

It is noteworthy that on March 31, 2010 Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe also recommended the Georgia, as CoE member state, to burden the charge for the crime committed based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Giorgi Gotsiridze of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association said if the proposed text is the final version of the draft-law, it can be evaluated as discriminative. Gotsiridze said, sexual orientation and gender identity is not on the list of discriminations in the Constitution of Georgia, however, according to the judgment of the Georgian Constitutional Court this list is not limited and Article 14 of the Constitution declares both circumstances discriminative.

According to the lawyer, the GYLA intends to petition to the Parliament of Georgia and request to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list.

Liberali